The eternal husband is incredible - one of his best stories

Some of these seemed to be first attempts at what later became novels. Put this down at some point & just never picked it up again.

Dostoevsky was clearly NOT the master of the short story in the way that he was the master of the prolonged novel of humanity, but the title story of this book (more like a short novel running in at just under 200 pages) really kept me hooked, and I kept wanting to come back to it to finish it. In the title story, a man runs into the widower of a woman he'd had an affair with years ago. With it comes all of the great Dostoevsky humor and human extremism that he is well-canoned for. The last three stories of the book didn't thrill me, though I did like how this shorter form seems to up the ante on Dostoevsky's humor. Get this book for the first two stories, but don't expect to get too much more than that. Still, it's well worth the effort.

Overall, a great collection of some of Dostoevsky's lesser known works. This book collects one long novella (The Eternal Husband, clocking in close to 200 pages), and four short stories. What's surprising is the amount of dark humor on display here. Dostoevsky is usually thought of as a very serious writer, and yet these stories feature some fantastically awkward comedy. Here is a breakdown of the stories:

A Nasty Anecdote (4/5): This is a hilariously cringe-inducing story that could double as a great episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Written early in Dostoevsky's career, it is not as profound as his signature works, but it is easily one of the most amusing pieces of his I've read.

The Eternal Husband (5/5): An amazing novella. I'm shocked that I hadn't heard of this one before reading the collection, because this easily ranks up there with his best works. Resembling a psychological duel between two men, this is one of Dostoevsky's most tightly plotted tales.

Bobok (3/5): A fantastical story that, while amusing, seems to end before it manages to fully flesh out its ideas.

The Meek One (4/5): Another well-plotted story, with a lot of insight into the psychology of marriage and communication.

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (4/5): This felt like a quasi-sequel to Notes from Underground. Or almost a counter-argument to that work. Reflects the spirituality of Karamazov-era Dostoevsky.

This is a masterful collection of short stories by Dostoevsky. I enjoyed the breadth of narratives presented, with each story varying enough from the previous to hold my attention. While Eternal Husband was the most striking due to how fleshed out it is, every story in this book has a unique and memorable character. Each narrator has a flawed yet deeply relatable perspective that will hook you.

Dostoevsky...enough said...

I only read part of these stories. They were interesting and contained thought-provoking characters, but i didn’t enjoy them enough to read the two final short stories.

This was my first effort at Dostoyevsky's shortest-length works, and it is a series of stories ranging from the rather dull to the sublime. The central novella, The Eternal Husband, didn't hold that much appeal to me, but some of the others -- Bobok, The Meek One, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man -- are solid gold in that best, most absurd and angry and funny way that Russians write. Stories that breathe flaming fumes.

In "Tropic of Cancer," Henry Miller, in an aside, says that "The Eternal Husband" is perfection. My guess is that he wanted to show off his knowledge of Dostoevsky by pulling a deep cut out of his ass. The Eternal Husband, a novella-length short story is ok. It has some very fine comic moments, but too often Dostoevsky tries the reader's patience. Most of the other short stories in this collection are much better. These are later-era Dostoevsky, when his hits were much more frequent than his misses.

As a longtime government worker, I have a warm spot for "A Nasty Anecdote," in which a high-ranking government executive makes a drunken ass out of himself at the wedding of an underling. "Bobok," is a humorous look at the conversations of the mostly dead buried in a cemetery. "The Meek One" (also known in other translations as "A Gentle Creature") is a fascinating case study of a psychologically abusive marriage. "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" is a thought-experiment in the form of a "dream" that describes an alternate Earth that starts as a paradise, but is ultimately ruined by lies. As I've said many times in my reviews of Dostoevsky's work, at times he is astonishingly ahead of his time. But his tendency to dwell in miserable subjects can be a bit much for even his most ardent fans.

Okay so I purposely drew out my reading of this book, because I felt a reading slump coming and the last thing I wanted was to rush myself reading this one and then find myself mentally weary of reading afterwards. Without this precaution of slowly reading, I could’ve finished it in a day or two, but I don’t regret reading like this :P Also, I just finished my hyper-analytical read of The Idiot (don’t regret that at all though), and it felt very refereshing to just go with this book and have a relaxed read, as I haven’t done in a while. My annotations are also pretty empty, but I’m still posting them.

Dostoyevsky wrote The Eternal Husband shortly after he wrote The Idiot, and I can definitely see remnants of it in the love triangle, in the protagonists’s dreams and reveries, in the doubles, and in the scandalous gatherings. Of course, these have always been ‘Dostoyevskian’ features, and ones we’ve seen probably since The Insulted and Humiliated (which I also read). What’s different is that he wrote I&H before Notes From Underground, and wrote The Idiot and The Eternal Husband afterward. His works pre-Underground and post-Underground are just amazing; I’ve never said that explicitly before, because I assume every Dostoyevsky reader would know or at least notice that. But really, pre-underground there’s a sense of dreaminess to his works, like they are imitations of real life; and yes, all literature is (debatably) an imitation of life, but his post-Underground works are different. Owing to many of the events in Dostoyevsky’s life between writing Netochka Nezvanovna and TEH (The Eternal Husband), the light of his works drastically changed after emerging from undergroud. In I&H, the love triangle is shown to the reader already, but in The Idiot and similarly TEH, the love triangle is fleshed out and almost experienced by the reader. Sorry for talking about The Idiot so much here, but I find it pretty important as I see both works are extremely similar.

Aside from that, in TEH the reader will undoubtedly notice similarities from Dostoyevsky’s previous novels. There are loan scenes from Crime and Punishment, and the concepts are so similar to The Idiot — which is the reason why I mention the novel so much. It’s almost like TEH is a condensation of all the major post-underground works Dostoyevsky has written: I have already mentioned the love triangle, but aside from that, there is the double, and the dreaming. The concept of the double has long since been a Dosotyevskian feature; it firts showed up in his second work ever, titled ‘The Double.’ Like every Dosotyevskian feature, it has long since been developed but only fleshed out after a renewal from underground. It is a concept where the main character is ‘split’. In Russian philosophy, there is that idea of ‘oneness’ in humanity that is made known in every single dosto book after NFU. The Double took this metaphor to the extreme by literally splitting the protagonist. The rest of Dostoyevsky’s literature continues to use this but in not so literal a sense. For example, Raskolnikov’s own splitting of self (his name raskolnik literally means schismatic), as well as possibly Svidrigailov; Ippolit and Myshkin; Ivan and Smerdyakov. These people are all ‘divided’ in their humanity by pride and/or social statures, which, instead of moral values, possesses the protagonist; as how Golyadkin and his double showed us literally. In EH (Eternal Husband), our protagonists are doubles through their own pride, strange past, and their sunken positions from high society. Velchaninov and Trusotsky have a contrapuntal relationship (as all doubles have), and each disaster and each triumph of the novel are born out of them.

Now for dreams and reveries: they play a very important role in TEH. In Dostoyevskian works, these dreams and reveries are the two forms that take a hold of our ‘dreamer’ protagonist. The reveries are easier to discuss; they are, well, reveries that the dreamer has that are lofty and correct in aesthetics but are so idealistic that in the end, they and the dreamer fail and are devastated. Those are what Myshkin have, and the Dreamer from ‘White Nights’ have. Dreams, though, are more complicated — they’re like revelations. They reveal to the dreamer truths or even ‘futures’ (just ways of life, really) that shape how they act throughout the rest of the book, and without which, they would’ve had a moral stagnation and therefore a lull in the novel’s progression. Such is the dream of Myshkin when he fell asleep on the green bench after his terribly eventful birthday, and the revelation of Alyosha Karamazov when he is overcome with such joy and love that he bends down to kiss the ground on which he was kneeling, and the dream of Mitya Karamazov of the freezing babe; but dreams have their evil counterparts as well. These are the dreams of Raskolnikov (right before he met Svidrigaolov), and Vanya Karamazov (the devil), and Velchaninov from our novel TEH. Velchaninov has dreams terribly similar to Raskolnikov’s terrors, but the real pivotal dream Velchaninov has was the phantasmagoria he experienced when he first let Trusotsky sleep in his rooms, which I will not be detailing because I don’t wanna have spoilers in my review.

Finally, on the scandalous gatherings. In TEH, it was when Velchaninov was invited by Trusotsky to go to the Zakhlebinins. In there, it was meant to be Trusotsky’s spotlight, because Velchaninov was only to be there as an ‘accessory’ to make Trusotsky look good in front of his fiancé’s family; instead, Trusotsky untterly humiliates himself, the girls prank and ridicule him, he loses his fiancé, all the while Velchaninov is venerated by the family. So, that obviously caused Trusotsky to be furious, and no doubt contributed to his sudden urge to kill Velchaninov despite admitting that he really loved him. Scandalous gatherings are by the way, also pivotal points in Dostoyevskian works where the characters from absolutely improbable sides come together and meet, and the chapter no doubt ends in insanity, poor relations, and a catapult in plot speed. The examples are: Ippolit (his whole character is a scandalous gathering), the chapter ‘A Scandalous Gathering’ in TBK, and those tete-a-tete chapters of Demons. Unfortunately, I honestly don’t remember which chapter was the scandalous gathering of CNP, but I’m sure there was one; I just can’t pick it out. But you get my point.

Anyway TEH was such a fun read, honestly. And unexpectedly really hilarious. As far as the translation, I really like P&V for this one; although, yes, you do have to re-read sentences as they can be a bit clunky, but you’ll be doing this in the original Russian as well, and it takes nothing out of the experience since I think anyone reading Dostoyevsky will have both the patience and reading comprehension skills to deal with it, so it’s no biggy. Also, Velchaninov and Trusotsky honestly made out and that left the biggest impression on me. It was like when Christ kissed the Grand Inquisitor and Alyosha kissed his brother Ivan (The Brothers Karamazov); two opposite entities meet in a gesture of love. As a final note: If you’ve read even one Dostoyevsky work, especially The Idiot, then this’ll be wonderful; aside from being a purely fun read, it’s a great study on his style.

Eternal Husband worth reading 2-3 times over. Rest of stories were good, particularly A Nasty Anecdote.

Fyodor!!!

“If you begin with that, sir, what will you end with?"

“Yes, sir, nature doesn't like monsters and finishes them off with 'natural solutions?' The most monstrous monster is the monster with noble feelings: I know it from my own experience, Pavel Pavlovich! For a monster, nature is not a tender mother, she's a step-mother. Nature gives birth to a monster, and, instead of pitying him, executes him—and right she is.”

“You don't know what paradise I'd have surrounded you with. Paradise was in my soul, I’d have planted it all around you!