REVIEWS

Roger B. Anderson. Dostoevsky: Myths of Duality. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1986. 186 pp. Paper, $14.50.

This monograph approaches six of Dostoevsky's major works by applying various myths to them. Duality, in the title of the book, does not refer so much to the doubleness of some of the characters, as to contrasts, antitheses, and conflicts. The intellectual influences most clearly apparent in this study are those of Mircea Eliade, Claude Levi-Strauss, Roger Callois, Joseph Campbell, Northrop Frye, and Jane Harrison, and among the Russians, Viacheslav Ivanov, Bakhtin, and Lotman.

The author's basic method is to give analyses and running commentaries on individual works by Dostoevsky. A concluding chapter draws together, reviews, and summarizes what this rather difficult book has tried to do. The Underground Man, for example, is considered in relation to the Trickster figure, in the chapter which this reviewer found the most provocative and stimulating. Still more unexpected and fascinating (although this reviewer thought it quite unconvincing) is the chapter on the Idiot, in which Myshkin is interpreted in terms of several analogies to the god Dionysos. The Devils is seen as a reflection of the dualities of Daemons. The Brothers Karamazov, in the most conventionally literary chapter, which is also the most valuable to the Dostoevsky scholar, is placed in the context of various channels of the Russian Orthodox religious tradition.

A student of Dostoevsky is likely to learn more from this book about myth than about Dostoevsky—the pages on the ancient Greek origins and other aspects of the myths of Dionysos, for example, are very illuminating, even if Anderson seems to be forcing Myshkin into a Procrustean as well as a Dionysian bed. The interpretation of Sonia in Crime and Punishment also seems rather fuzzy. However, the book will be of interest to students of Dostoevsky, even if the insights we glean and the unexpected, valuable new connections come in incidental remarks, in asides and suggestions, in the corners of the study, rather than in its central line of argument.

The book is not an easy read. This is because the ideas are difficult, and sometimes, in addition, the sentences and the arguments are constructed in a manner which is not user-friendly.

Regrettably, some important sources are missing. Neither the text, the footnotes, nor the bibliography show any sign of the author's having drawn on some of the important recent works of Western as well as Soviet writers: there is no reference to Robin Miller's book on The Idiot, or Vetlovskaya's several studies of various works by Dostoevsky. Recent Soviet publications are the most neglected. Some older studies are also ignored: Berdiaev and Zander are missing, as are Sylvia Plath's (and others') studies of doubleness in Dostoevsky.

The book as a whole is sensitive and ingenious, but unrigorous in its method.

George Gibian                                                                                                         Cornell University

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Leslie A. Johnson. The Experience of Time in "Crime and Punishment." Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1985. 146 pp. Paper, $11.95.

Leslie Johnson's study is useful to both scholar and student in hat it brings into one place a variety of considerations of time in relation to literature: narrative as a temporal art form; time as a theme in itself; subjective versus objective time; temporal representation as a sign of the structure of consciousness during a particular historical period; "crisis" time, in which an instant becomes equal to years, decades; and artistic time as only a representation of objective time in the narrative. In addition the author provides a bibliography of some ninety items. She selects for special attention in her Introduction writings on time in Dostoevsky by Likhachev; Bakhtin (emphasis on space over time; coexistence and simultaneity); Voloshin (identifies solid, objective time framework); Kirpotin (Dostoevsky's acute sensitivity to passage of time in Crime and Punishment); Holquist (points out the correspondence between the representation of objective time and the objective experience of the characters); Popova (insights in narrative time and psychological time); Catteau ("potentialized" time); Mochul'skii (humanization and spiritualization of time); Pletnev (Dostoevsky's psychology of personal time); and Ermilova (Dostoevsky's treatment of bizarre states of consciousness in subjective terms).

Johnson sees all of the above as having a common methodological bias that prevents them from grasping "the true critical usefulness of subjective time in understanding the novel." They relate it exclusively to "artistic time." She notes that Crime and Punishment is not a true "time" novel, as Remembrance of Things Past is; it is instead a subjective time novel. Johnson's critical approach is to employ subjective time as "an interpretive tool for clarifying the novel's urgent substantive concerns" — the vital concerns of its characters.

My impression is that Johnson does not succeed in opening any new doors with this approach. Where she is at her most provocative and interesting — as in discussing the nature of Raskol'nikov's tragedy in schism and alienation; the intentions of Porfiry (I disagree with her, but that is incidental); or the relationship of the epilogue to the main part of the novel (she seems to see it right)--she scarcely mentions time, or refers to it only perfunctorily: because in fast a special analysis of time is not required, for the most part, to reach a true understanding of the novel. Probably an entire book oriented toward time in Crime and Punishment is not justified.

A more serious criticism of the book is its too great use of jargon and empty terminology. Johnson rightly finds an existential theme in the novel, growing out of a statement from one of Dostoevsky’s diaries: "... time is the relation of being to non-being." This generates a continual awareness of "non-being" and "existential structure." We are told that a "spirit of nothingness broods over the canvas of Crime and Punishment." We are obliged to cope with the "etiology" of evil instead of merely the causes of it—and with "fundamental ontological intuitions about being and non-being" instead of with just "intuitions about ..." In the epilogue, on "the morning of his ontological renewal," writes

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Johnson, "... Raskol'nikov senses the eternal ground of his being." Also in the epilogue, Raskol'nikov is said to "despair of the deathliness of his solitary self." This really rather strange sort of writing tends to distract one from the legitimate insights that the author does in fact make. In addition, there is a pervasive eschatological theme in the novel, which leads to the repeated use of the Greek word eschaton by Johnson, as in "... the end of his crisis time is objectified by an apparent eschaton in the narrative." Eschaton means "end." How is the Greek an improvement over the English?

Johnson seems to run out of ways to speak of time and occasionally gets desperate, as when she refers to Raskol'nikov's "anguish of on-flowing, out-flowing time." In a chapter title (and elsewhere) she invents "the nevermore and evermore of schism,"—while Raskol'nikov suffers "the same old inertia and futility of on-running, out-running chronos..." Ordinary (sometimes embellished) clichés include "the bitter pill which Raskol'nikov must swallow— and which he keeps swallowing in Siberia..." Raskol'nikov is also "strained ... to the breaking point." Time is said to be "a burden, an onerous duration." On the first page of the book we are told that: "Time ... rules the world ..., and none of the novel's suffering characters escapes its tyranny." While on the last page but two, Raskol'nikov and Sonia experience Raskol'nikov's renewal "as a general release from the tyranny of time."

I do not want to be unfair, but the stylistic problems I have cited are taken from no more than ten or fifteen arbitrarily selected pages. They truly reflect the style of the entire book. Any writer needs a good editor; it is unfortunate that Leslie Johnson evidently was unable to find hers.

Donald M. Fiene                                                                             University of Tennessee, Knoxville

N. V. Kashina. Chelovek v tvorchestve F. M. Dostoevskogo. Moskva: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1986. 317 pp. Cloth, 1r. 50k.

N. V. Kashina's stated goal is to study Dostoevsky's treatment of his literary protagonists and, by extension, to examine his view of man in general. The manner in which the author chooses to organize this material is closely matched by her critical approach. Both are well-informed, traditional, and, at times, irritating.

The first two chapters in the study serve as an introduction to the main topic. The first, "Dostoevsky's Realism", deals with Dostoevsky's artistic methods and style. It includes a section on Dostoevsky's language where the discussion of the chronicler-narrator's language is one of the most stimulating parts of Kashina's book. The manner in which Dostoevsky uses the social setting of his time and his use of psychological analysis form the second chapter. I will have occasion to comment on the former later; as far as psychological analysis is concerned, Kashina discusses Dostoevsky's reluctance to fully explain human behavior, hence the effect of unexpectedness and the multi-motivational aspect of his heroes' behavior. That Dostoevsky is primarily interested in the mental world of his heroes, she argues, is to some degree an illusion. He does not so much analyze them, but (as in Notes) he hears them out. Similarly, he is not interested specifically in the internal processes of egotism or altruism, but, so to speak, in the sociology of these qualities, of their influences on others (pp. 96 - 97) .

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The last three parts of the book deal with Dostoevsky's relationship to his heroes and the world through, what Kashina argues, are the basic esthetic categories — the beautiful, the tragic, and the comic. By the beautiful Kashina means Dostoevsky's concept of moral beauty, both individual and social as it is expressed not only in his ideal heroes Myshkin and Alesha Karamazov, but also in ordinary men who, like Dmitrii, are able to achieve spiritual rebirth. The tragic and the comic, which, together with the beautiful, form parts of Dostoevsky's system of values, are seen as infringements against the idea of beauty. Kashina divides her chapter on the tragic into smaller sub-topics: "Tragic Character", "Tragic Tone" (which turns out to be a discussion of death in Dostoevsky's works), "The Tragedy of Self-Will", and "The Tragedy of the Underground". In the last chapter she defines different types of the comic and then examines how they function in various situations and characters. In discussing both the tragic and the comic Kashina rounds up the usual suspects, but her cross-examination is often spirited and, at times, provocative.

In fact, the book has much that is positive to recommend it. Kashina is very good in the introductory chapters, when she discusses the reasons for the rejection of Dostoevsky's major works by his contemporaries, who accused him of distorting reality. Kashina argues that while Dostoevsky had a unique manner of transforming reality, his model of reality did not correspond to that of his readers. The latter, accustomed to the physically and psychologically detailed descriptions in the novels of Goncharov, Turgenev, Balzac, or Flaubert, found Dostoevsky's novels rather barren. They were equally suspicious of the numerous ways in which Dostoevsky presented his literary heroes. There were realistically motivated social types; those with a single dominant trait (Sonya as hope, Svidrigailov as despair); enigmatic characters behaving in ways seemingly contrary to their true nature; and those exhibiting inconsistent behavior. Nor were they able to deal with the heavy concentration of "cruel" situations or with the atmosphere of mystery, both of which were perceived as features of Romanticism. The difficulties the contemporary reader had in decoding Dostoevsky's works are further complicated by Dostoevsky's manner of narration. While reader and critic could somehow cope with the traditional "objective" manner of narration used in Crime and Punishment, where the position of the author was comprehensible, in his later novels Dostoevsky used some form of limited narration. The readers and often the critics of Dostoevsky's time, blind to the rules of literary convention, placed the same demands on literary facts as they did on actual narration. Their confusion becomes even more evident when they were faced with Dostoevsky's naive and ironic narrator. The contradiction between the objective sense of the narrated material and the sense attributed to it by the narrator complicated the reception of the literary work. The reader was lost when confronted by the emotional variety of Dostoevsky's universe where the serious appeared together with the comic, tragic events were cloaked in irony, and the narrator's mask served to obscure the true visage of the author. In addition, the reader, in his search for the author's real position, tended to find it in the theories of the hero-thinkers (Raskol'nikov, Ivan) instead of in the words of the rather unassuming narrators.

Kashina is a very confident critic, not reluctant to respectfully take Bakhtin to task. She argues that if Bakhtin's theory of polyphony — the characters' independence, their equality of voice

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-- is understood to mean an absence of the author's own view of the world, then Bakhtin is absolutely wrong. She argues, and it is difficult not to agree, that the protagonists of all of Dostoevsky's novels are within the author's united evaluative field of vision. We know his likes and dislikes. Thus the reader is filled with disgust for Fedor Karamazov, Luzhin, or Lambert, and understands that the sympathies of the author are with Myshkin, Alesha, and Sonya. Even in the case of the hero-thinkers like Ivan (whom she argues Bakhtin had primarily in mind), where the reader has cause to suspect that the author may be of a like mind, the novel in its totality undermines Ivan's position.

The places in the book where it is difficult to share Kashina's interpretations are those where she insists on the impact of the social background on the protagonists. On the one hand, she points out that Dostoevsky believed that man must answer for his actions no matter what the circumstances and that neither education, improper environment, nor social poverty justifies evil. On the other, her own beliefs run counter to those of Dostoevsky, and since one of her tasks is to bring Dostoevsky closer in line with the thinking of the radical intelligentsia (her statement that he deeply respected Chernyshevskii can at best be only partially true) and with post-revolutionary thinking, she has to resort to explanations that are not always convincing. Thus she presents a foreground-background kind of argumentation where the behavior of the secondary characters is conditioned by their adherence to a social class, while the protagonists of the first order are "psychologically typical": their behavior is not mandated by the fact of their belonging to a social class; they are only loosely tied to their place in society. It is at the times when Kashina seems most determined to argue environmental causality on behavior (selective or otherwise) that the thought arises: "If the universe had wanted correctly executed social novels, it would have created Gleb Uspensky."

Differences in literary interpretation need not trouble us for long. Ultimately they are creative. What is troubling, however, is the book's partisan and, at times, aggressive tone, especially evident in the introduction and the conclusion, that has very little in common with Dostoevsky's ideas of universal brotherhood and which is as much out of place in its post-facto irrelevance as works by bourgeois ideologists (as Kashina points out) who use Dostoevsky's authority to argue against contemporary socialist societies.

Surely the cause of Dostoevsky criticism is little served by her contention that Raskol'nikov's Napoleonic fantasy, the Adolescent's Rothschildian dream, and the theory of a mindless paradise for the masses under the Grand Inquisitor's elite, are "ideas quite characteristic of the capitalist world and, as history has shown, ominously developing and alive to this day." (p.313) Nor is it well served when she suggests that the individual primitivized by a capitalist mass society sees the wounds of his society reflected in Dostoevsky's works and finds there the spiritual life for which he anguishes. Although she claims that in Soviet society injustice and human degradation are things of the past, she does concede that the  "moral problems which Dostoevsky's heroes faced are not alien to the individual in a socialist society." (pp.316-17) One assumes that the models are to be the protagonists of the first order.

Jerzy Kolodziej                                                                             University of Tennessee, Knoxville

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Bruce K. Ward. Dostoyevsky's Critique of the West. The Quest for the Earthly Paradise. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: Wilfried Laurier University Press, 1986. xiv, 202 pp. Can.$ 27.95.

Ward sees in Dostoevsky one of the thinkers "who might be able to illuminate the crisis of Western modernity" (p.1). The starting point of his fundamental analysis is therefore the "pervasive sense of crisis" to 20th century man. Behind it looms the question of the "best human order" (p.5). Dostoevsky's central concern thus reflects the gist of Western political and philosophical endeavors and their echo in Russian Westernism Ward himself defines the aim of his study in the following words: "The primary intention of this study is to expound as clearly as possible Dostoyevsky's teaching concerning the West, demonstrating that his observations constitute a coherent critique which is intertwined with the deepest aspects of his thought." (p.6) The two hundred pages that follow must be considered a remarkable achievement of this ambitious undertaking.

Ward divides his material into four thematic complexes, (1) Russian Westernism, (2) the problem of order in the modern West, (3) the meaning of the "final Western social formula", and (4) Dostoevskys judgment of the foundation of Western civilization. Dostoevsky's pronouncements between 1860 and 1881 are treated as a coherent body of thought (which is justified by the author by the "remarkable consistency" in the writer's thinking). Starting with Belinsky and Russian Westernism of the 1840's, Ward proceeds to analyze the evolution of Dostoevsky's understanding of Westernism through the sixties and seventies referring particularly to Besy (Verkhovenskij and Shigalev) and Podrostok (Versilov). His conclusion: "For Dostoyevsky, the fundamental goal of Russian Westernism, uniting fathers and sons, is the earthly paradise founded on reason and justified by the appeal to love of humanity." (p.60) This is followed by an analysis of Dostoevsky's understanding of national types and the evolution of socialist ideas from an early utopian, idealistic phase to "scientific" socialism and eventually political, revolutionary socialism. The last phase would lead in Dostoevsky's view to the (shortlived) triumph of Communism and the merging of the office of the Roman Catholic pontiff with the leadership of an atheistic and materialistic order on earth. Ward draws a line linking the origin of the "Geneva idea" of universal freedom, equality and brotherhood to its eventual result in the "final Western social formula" as explicated by Ivan's Grand Inquisitor: "Those who would rule over humanity for its happiness must be both distributors of 'loaves' and preachers of 'miracle', mystery, and authority.' Properly interpreted, and regarded in the light of historical experience, the first two temptations reveal that people will ultimately consent only to an order which provides them with both earthly and heavenly bread." (p.113) The third temptation expresses the need for "universal unity", equivalent to Satan's offer of the "kingdoms of the world", i.e. the universal state implying the realization of 2 universal order. Ward combines the analysis of Ivan's essay on "The Geological Upheaval"

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and Kirillov's idea of the "Man-God" with his interpretation of Ivan's poem. Dostoevsky's refutation of Ivan's position in the teachings of Zosima is seen to center around the figure of Christ. Ward discusses Dostoevsky's image of Christ and paradise with reference to "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" and Ivan's article (related by the devil) concerning Church and State. It is the "church idea", i.e. Dostoevsky's understanding of Orthodoxy, which essentially represents an alternative concept of order meant to replace the "Western social formula", where order leads to chaos, disorder and, ultimately, to tyranny. This leads to a discussion of Dostoevsky's philosophy of history and the church schism that gave rise to Orthodoxy in the East and Roman Catholicism in the West. Ward concludes: "Dostoyevsky's final word, then, concerning the problem of Peter the Great is that Peter's turn towards the West has made possible the 'universal service of mankind to which Orthodoxy is designated.'... Dostoevsky thus rejects the conservative longing for pre-Petrine order, and affirms the universal aspiration of Russian Westernism... But Dostoyevsky's great concern is that this aspiration be informed, not by the Geneva idea, but by that church idea which is still preserved among the Russian people." (p.181) The Appendix adds a very appropriate and enlightening analysis of the main controversy leading to the church schism (the filioque issue). The book concludes with a Select Bibliography and an Index.

Ward's excellent background in theology, philosophy and the intellectual history of Russia, his thorough knowledge of Dostoevsky and, obviously, the Russian language have combined to produce a superb study, eminently readable and well-informed, concerning Dostoevsky's understanding of "order" and "disorder" in the West in relationship to Russia and its potential future. A future second edition may well devote more space to an analysis of Dostoevsky's relationship to Russia's radical critics of the sixties and the arguments of another crucial text by Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground. It must also be considered a limitation that Ward refers only to literature on Dostoevsky in English and Russian. Lauth's study of Dostoevsky's philosophy as well as important studies by Madaule and Bohatec and others in French or German are not mentioned.

Prof. Ward is teaching in the Department of Religious Studies at Thorneloe College, Laurentian University (Sudbury, Ontario, Canada). His book is based on a doctoral dissertation in Religious Studies.

Rudolf Neuhäuser                                                                                             Klagenfurt University

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Geir Kjetsaa. Prinadlezhnost' Dostoevskomu: K voprosu ob atributsii F.M. Dostoevskomu anonimnykh statej v zhurnalakh "Vremiá" i "Epokha". (Slavica Norvegica, IV.) Oslo: Solum Forlag A.S., 1986. 82 pp. Cloth.

Problems of authorship attribution have provided a benign and beneficent ground for the meeting of humanistic studies and technology. Professor Kjetsaa's book gives a striking demonstration of how computer technology can be used to help us make intelligent decisions concerning disputed authorship.

Specifically, Professor Kjetsaa seeks, in this slender volume, to determine which of twelve unsigned articles that appeared in the journals Time and Epoch during Dostoevsky's tenure as editor were in fact written by him. Kjetsaa made this study at the request of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In an information sheet that accompanied my copy of the book, Kjetsaa says that the "immediate reason for the request was to assist the editors in deciding whether or not these articles ought to be included in the Academy edition of Dostoevsky's works." It should be pointed out that although the term "authorship attribution" is being used in this review, it is not meant to imply here, as it often does, that the investigator was seeking to find out who wrote the disputed articles. Rather, he was attempting to ascertain whether or not the evidence pointed to Dostoevsky as their author.

Perhaps the most important difference between traditional methods of authorship attribution studies and computer-assisted efforts is that the former were often based almost entirely on evaluations of ideological and thematic content. It is clear on but little reflection that works by people of like ideological persuasions would appear similar, particularly when published in a tendentious journal.

There have been, of course, efforts to decide questions of authorship based on linguistic and stylistic observations, but without the assistance of computers, these studies tend to be modest in scope and are greatly subject to error.

Kjetsaa opted for the linguistic and stylistic approach in his undertaking, with the assistance, however, of a DEC-10 mainframe computer at the University of Oslo.

The actual counting and statistical analysis of words is, of course, not difficult to do. The difficulty in undertaking an investigation of this type is in making the correct decisions about what to count and what to analyze. Therefore, one could say that results of computer-assisted stylistic research stand or fall on the criteria the investigator selects to examine (and of course other facts over which the scholar has little power, for example, the size of the sample being studied).

Kjetsaa developed fifteen linguistic parameters for his study. They were:

1. The general distribution of parts of speech in the first two and last three positions in a sentence.

2. The distribution of parts of speech in the sentence's first position.

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3. The distribution of parts of speech in the sentence's second position.

4. The combination of parts of speech in the first two positions of the sentence.

5. The distribution of parts of speech in the antepenultimate position.

6. The distribution of parts of speech in the penultimate position of the sentence.

7. The distribution of parts of speech in the ultimate position of the sentence.

8. The distribution of parts of speech in the last three positions of the sentence.

9. The average word length in letters, computed on the basis of a selection of 500 words of the text.

10. The general distribution of word length.

11. The average sentence length in words, computed on the basis of a selection of 30 sentences.

12. The general distribution of sentence length.

13. The text's lexical spectrum at the vocabulary level.

14. The text's lexical spectrum at the text level.

15. An index of lexical diversity.

The book provides a detailed explanation of these parameters, the selection of which seems highly justified.

The general methodology here consists of running the tests on a body of undisputed work, and then of comparing the outcome of these tests to the outcome of tests run on the disputed works. Kjetsaa presents all the necessary discussion concerning the statistical methods he used, much of which seems highly technical for the statistically naive or uneducated; however, the charts presented for each criterion are quite clear enough for anyone, and very convincing. These charts show almost without any doubt at all that certain texts, for example, "Pis'mo Postoronnego kritika v redaktsiiu nashego zhurnala po povodu knig g-na Panaeva i "Novogo poeta"." Vremia, 1861, No 1, otd. II, str. 46-64, must certainly have been written by Dostoevsky, while others, for example "Politicheskoe obozrenie. Obshchii obzor glavnejshikh politicheskikh sobytii proshedshego goda." Epokha, 1864, No 12, str. 1-32, could not possibly have been written by him. In spite of the certainty expressed in the above sentence, Kjetsaa points out, and all must concur, that this is a "conditional certainty" (my term), conditional because with the absence of other corroborating evidence, no matter what statistical correspondences we may find, we will never "really know" whether or not Dostoevsky in fact wrote these articles.

Kjetsaa's book is of interest for several reasons. At one level, simply the data presented, such as Dostoevsky's average word and sentence length, or his most frequently used words, or the distribution of parts of speech in his sentence are of interest to the scholar concerned with the author's style. On another level, students with a concern about Dostoevsky's journalistic endeavors will find much that is interesting. Finally, the book provides an excellent example of what the new field of stylometrics can mean to our work.

Martin P. Rice                                                                                 University of Tennessee, Knoxville

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Geir Kjetsaa. Sträfling - Spieler - Dichterfürst. Aus dem Norwegischen ins Deutsche übertragen von Astrid Arz. Casimir Katz Verlag, Gernsbach, 1986. 499 S. (Titel des Originals: Fjoder Dostojevskij - et dikterlif. Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, Oslo 1985. 423 S.)

Wie der Autor im Vorwort festhält, will er vor allem das Leben Dostojewskijs schildern. Dies ist ihm auch ausgezeichnet gelungen. Der Leser findet in seinem Buch eine einfühlsame und ausgewogene Darstellung der Licht- und Schattenseiten im Leben Dostojewskijs. Manche Details wurden von Professor Kjetsaa im Verlauf von Archivstudien in der Sowjetunion ermittelt.

Die Biographie ist augenscheinlich für den interessierten Laien gedacht, - auf Anmerkungen wurde der leichteren Lesbarkeit willen bewußt verzichtet, dafür ist jedem Kapitel im Anhang eine ausführliche Bibliographie beigegeben. Ein Namensregister beschließt den Band. Eine wertvolle Ergänzung des Textes sind die zahlreichen Abbildungen. Auch der Dostojewskij-Kenner wird Kjetsaas Studie mit Gewinn lesen. Besonders ausführlich behandelt sind die Familiengeschichte der Dostojewskijs, das Verhältnis Fjodors und seiner Geschwister zum Vater, dessen plötzlicher Tod, die berühmte Puschkinrede und Die Brüder Karamzov. Der Autor greift wiederholt auf seine Studie des Bibelexemplars zurück, das Dostojewskij seit Sibirien stets begleitete. Besonders aufschlußreich erweisen sich dabei Dostojewskijs Marginalien und Unterstreichungen für die Diskussion der Dämonen.

Bedauerlicherweise enthält die deutsche Übersetzung, besonders was die Kapitel 1-4 betrifft, zahlreiche Fehler und stilistische Mängel. Einige der Formulierungen scheinen überzogen. So wird Dostojewskijs Roman Arme Leute "tränentriefender Erstling" genannt (S. 73).

Die Feuilletons aus den vierziger Jahren werden als "Glossen" bezeichnet (S.81). Herzen soll von Dostojewskij gesagt haben, er sei "nicht ganz klar im Kopf" (S.190). Im Original steht: "ne sovsem jasnyj". Der Dostojewskij der späten vierziger Jahre wird als "tief religiös" charakterisiert (S. 57). Von Zar Alexander I. wird behauptet, er hätte den Mord an seinem Vater "befohlen", obwohl in historischen Studien nur von Mitwissenschaft die Rede ist. David Friedrich Strauss wird als linker Hegelianer bezeichnet (S. 76), obwohl er zumindest in seinen politischen Ansichten eher der hegelschen Rechten nahe stand.

Es wäre wünschenswert, wenn die hier angeführten Übersetzungsfehler und verschiedene Ungenauigkeiten in der Übersetzung in einer künftigen neuen Auflage des Buches berichtigt würden. Nichtsdestoweniger stellt Kjetsaas Biographie eine lesenswerte Bereicherung der Dostojewskij-Literatur in deutscher Sprache dar.

Rudolf Neuhäuser                                                                                                 Universität Klagenfurt

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James L. Rice: Dostoevsky and the Healing Art: An Essay in Literary and Medical History. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1985. 352 pp.

Die vorliegende Untersuchung über Dostojewskij und die Heilkunst hat zweifellos mehrfache Vorzüge. Jeder, der sich mit Dostojewskijs Leben und Werk beschäftigt hat, wird hier neue Informationen finden und manches Bekannte in einem neuen Licht sehen. Vorweg verdient die ausgezeichnete Bibliographie hervorgehoben zu werden. Hier finden wir beisammen, was zuvor nur mühsam erschlossen werden konnte, denn die üblichen Dostojewskij-Bibliographien tragen einen rein "slavistischen" Charakter, das heißt, medizinische, psychiatrische, psychoanalytische Beiträge zum Thema tauchen nur sporadisch auf. Zwar kann Rice auf die Vorarbeiten von J. Whitt (1953), J. B. Gilbert (1962), B. Greenberg (1975) und M. Kravchenko (1978) zurückgreifen, doch ist seine "Selected Special Bibliography" (S. 300-340) von besonderem Wert, weil hier die anstehende Thematik von Grund auf neu recherchiert wurde. Aufgeführt werden insgesamt 866 Titel. Zu ergänzen sind: H. Tellenbach: Geschmack und Atmosphäre. Medien menschlichen Elementarkontaktes (Salzburg: Otto Müller 1968), worin Aleksej und Ivan Karamasov abgehandelt werden, und G, Benedetti: Psychiatrische Aspekte des Schöpferischen und schöpferische Aspekte der Psychiatrie (Göttingen: Verlag für medizinische Psychologie im Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1975), worin Goljadkin und Fürst Myškin abgehandelt werden. Rice gliedert sein Buch in vier große Kapitel: begonnen wird mit einer Diskussion der vorliegenden Diagnosen zur Krankheit des jungen Dostojewskij; hier werden die Memoiren Dr. Stepan D. Janovskijs (erschienen 1881 und 1885) mit besonderer Aufmerksamkeit betrachtet, was bislang so nicht üblich war. Wie Janovskij berichtet, habe Dostojewskij bereits in den Jahren vor der Verbannung an epileptischen Anfällen gelitten und seine Krankheit euphemistisch und witzig als "Kondraška s veterkom" bezeichnet; "veterok" ist als medizinischer Terminus für die Aura anzusehen, die einem epileptischen Anfall vorausgeht, was etwa, so Rice, aus dem 1845 erschienenen Lehrbuch Djadkovskijs, Praktičeskaja medicina, zu ersehen sei; "Kondraska s veterkom" als "Schlaganfall mit Aura" sei deshalb als Dostojewskijs Umschreibung der Epilepsie zu werten, was als Beweis dafür anzusehen sei, daß Dostojewskij von seiner legendären Krankheit bereits vor seiner Verbannung nach Sibirien heimgesucht wurde. Mit dem ersten Kapitel seines Buches läßt Rice die verschiedenen Reaktionen der Zeitgenossen Dostojewskijs auf dessen Krankheit präsent werden. Rice führt uns hier Dostojewskijs Krankheit sozusagen von außen vor: im Spiegel der anderen. Im zweiten Kapitel seines Buches nun führt uns Rice Dostojewskijs Krankheit von innen vor: drei Lebensphasen werden unterschieden, nämlich "Jugend", "Sibirien" und "Reife". Auch jetzt werden aber ständig Zeugnisse der Zeitgenossen mit einbezogen. Die Version, daß Dostojewskij im sibirischen Zuchthaus körperlich und seelisch derart leiden mußte, daß er in die Epilepsie getrieben wurde, wird von Rice als "strategische Lüge" (S. 76) bezeichnet; die wahre Geschichte der Krankheit Dostojewskijs sei nur Janovskij, Majkov and einigen wenigen anderen bekannt gewesen, die aber zu Dostojewskijs Lebzeiten aus Loyalität und Klugheit Stillschweigen

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bewahrten. In den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten seines Lebens hat Dostojewskij selbst 102 seiner epileptischen Anfälle registriert. Rice fügt hinzu, daß auf Grund anderer Quellen ungefähr zwei Dutzend weiterer Anfälle zu verzeichnen seien. Im Anhang zu seinem Buch (S. 287-298) gibt Rice eine detaillierte Aufstellung der vorliegenden Zeugnisse (einschließlich Dostojewskijs eigener) zu den zwischen 1861 und 1881 bekannt gewordenen epileptischen Anfällen Dostojewskijs. Vom Streben nach umfassender Dokumentation zeugt auch die auf S. 100 beigebrachte Photographie Aleksej Dostojewskijs (1875-1878), der mit knapp drei Jahren vor den Augen seines Vaters an einem epileptischen Anfall gestorben ist. Innerhalb der Familie wurde aber eine Version zu verbreiten versucht, wonach Dostojewskijs Sohn an einer Schädelanomalie gestorben sei. Im dritten Kapitel liefert Rice einen medizinhistorischen Überblick, der uns den Kenntnisstand Dostojewskijs bezüglich einschlägiger Werke zur Psychiatrie, Neuropathologie, Phrenologie und speziell zur Epilepsie vermitteln soll. Rice breitet hier ein faszinierendes Wissen aus, das in solcher Zusammenfassung innerhalb der bisherigen Dostojewskij-Forschung nicht zu finden ist. Zunächst werden die "Klassiker der Psychiatrie und Neuropathologie" Esguirol und Romberg behandelt, danach "Körper, Geist und Seele" auf Grund der Schriften Galls und Carus'; selbstverständlich wird in solchem Zusammenhang auch auf Lavater eingegangen. Unter der Überschrift "Psychopathologie und Sozialgeschichte" werden A. A. F. Brierre des Boismont (1798-1881) und Jacques-Joseph Moreau (1804-1884) diskutiert; insbesondere Brierres Theorie der Halluzination und Moreaus Überlegungen zu Entartung und Genie unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Epilepsie. Zum Thema "Epileptisches Verhalten und Persönlichkeit" werden Armand Trousseau (1801-1867), Theodore Herpin (1799-1865) und Jules Fairét (1824-1902) vorgestellt. Zu vermissen ist ein eigener Abschnitt über Claude Bernard, der zwar viermal erwähnt wird, wegen seiner Bedeutung für die Brüder Karamazov aber eine ausführliche Behandlung verdienen würde. Der letzte Abschnitt des dritten Kapitels ist dem Thema "Epilepsie und russische Rechtswissenschaft" gewidmet. Hier werden insbesondere die Beiträge Aleksej Puskarevs, Aleksandr Ljubavskijs und Pavel Kovalevskijs zur forensischen Psychiatrie gewürdigt. Aus Ljubavskijs Handbuch der forensischen Psychiatrie (Russkie ugolovnye processy, Petersburg 1866-1868, Bd. 3: Kazuistika duševnych boleznej , 1867) werden fünf Fallgeschichten, die epileptische Straftäter betreffen, ausführlich referiert. Man darf Rice bescheinigen, daß er mit dem dritten Kapitel, das die Überschrift "Morbus sacer" trägt, die Forschungsläge des 19. Jahrhunderts bezüglich Epilepsie und Verbrechen in wesentlichen Punkten verdeutlicht. Das vierte und letzte Kapitel seines Buches überschreibt Rice mit "Die Heilkunst". Im Unterschied zu den vorhergehenden Kapiteln wird jedoch hier keine kohärente Thematik behandelt, sondern einzelne, voneinander unabhängige Fragen. So werden zunächst die von Vladimir Ciz vorgenommenen typologischen Einordnungen der Gestalten Dostojewskijs besprochen: Dostoevskij kak psiahopatolog (1884) und Dostoevskij kak kriminolog (1901), danach wird Freuds berühmter Artikel "Dostojewski und die Vatertotung" (1928) im Kontext der vorausgehenden Arbeiten Rene Fulop-Millers ("Dostojewskijs 'beilige Krankheit'", 1924)

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Jolan Neufelds (Dostojewski. Skizze zu seiner Psychoanalyse, 1923), Tatjana Rozental's ("Stradanie i tvorčestvo Dostoevskogo: psichogenetičeskoe issledovanie", 1919) einbezogen. Der anschließende Abschnitt über "Dostojewski] und die moderne Medizin" liefert einen konzisen Forschungsbericht, der russische, deutsche, französische und englische Publikationen zum Thema bis 1984 berücksichtigt. Danach kommt es unter der Überschrift "Homo Duplex", einer Prägung Buffons (S. 248), zu systematischen Anmerkungen zum Thema des Doppelgängers bei Dostojewskij. Der folgende Abschnitt ist "Smerdjakov" gewidmet und bringt auf S. 255 eine Schwarz-weiß-Reproduktion von Kramskojs Gemälde "Der Beschauliche" (Sozercatel' ) aus dem Jahre 1878, das im Text der Brüder Karamazov auf Smerdjakov bezogen wird. Der letzte Abschnitt schließlich ist der in Dostojewskijs Werken immer wieder erwähnten Gestalt Mohammeds gewidmet. Wie Rice betont, wird heute angezweifelt, daß Mohammed an Epilepsie gelitten habe, im 19. Jahrhundert aber war die Vorstellung vom epileptischen Propheten allgemein verbreitet. Rices Erläuterungen konzentrieren sich auf die Lektüre Kolja Krasotkins, für den ein Buch mit dem Titel Rodstvennik Magometa, ili celitel'noe duračestvo eine besondere Rolle spielt; wie Rice ausführt, handelt es sich um Le Cousin de Mahomet, einen moralisierenden Abenteuerroman von Nicolas Fromaget, erschienen 1742 und in späteren Auflagen mit dem Untertitel la folie salutaire versehen. Man sieht: Rice geht sein großes Thema "Dostojewskij und die Heilkunst" auf drei verschiedene Weisen an: zunächst biographisch (Kap. I und II: S. 3-108), danach medizinhistorisch (Kap. III: S. 109-199) und schließlich durch Exkurse zu Einzelfragen (Kap. IV: S. 200-279). Die Materialien, die Rice mit seinem Buch übersichtlich bereitstellt, werden sich für jeden, der der Rolle der Epilepsie im Leben und im Werk Dostojewskijs nachgehen möchte, als wahre Fundgrube erweisen. Rice selbst sagt allerdings zur Rolle der Krankheit in den Werken Dostojewskijs nur wenig. So bleibt es künftigen Arbeiten vorbehalten, die Ergebnisse des vorliegenden Buches für die Interpretation der einzelnen Werke Dostojewskijs zu nutzen. Dostojewskijs Bild vom Menschen, wie es insbesondere in seinen fünf großen Romanen sichtbar wird, ist zweifellos gegen all jene Hypothesen gerichtet, die den Menschen als Produkt seiner Erbanlagen und/oder seines Milieus zu definieren suchen. Die von Rice vorgelegten Materialien werden dazu beitragen, Dostojewskijs Auffassung vom Menschen detaillierter als bisher vom positivistischen Geist seiner Zeit abzugrenzen. Es stellt sich des weiteren die Aufgabe, die von Rice gelieferten Forschungsergebnisse in dem großen Zusammenhang zu sehen, den Dietrich von Engelhardt in seiner Abhandlung "Medizin und Literatur in der Neuzeit - Perspektiven und Aspekte" skizziert hat (in: Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 52, 1978, Heft 3, S. 351-380).

Horst-Jürgen Gerigk                                                                                                 Universität Heidelberg