Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt 1821-1849
Joseph Frank
Princeton: Princeton University Press
401 pp. $16.50

Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt 1821-1849 (the first of four volumes of the life and works) is a salutary event in a time when the Newest Criticism is declaring the bankruptcy of the unified text. Not that a great text like Notes from Underground or even a lesser one like The Double are susceptible to easy solutions. If Joseph Frank believes Dostoevsky’s work can be convincingly interpreted in the terms of the novelist’s intentions, he knows how formidable the critic must be. He must have judgment, a gift for literary interpretation, a deep knowledge of Russian political and social history—a sensitivity to individual psychology, and a general culture that makes it possible for him to place Dostoevsky in currents that flow beyond Russia. As important as these powers is the capacity to integrate them. The extraordinary demands on the critic are a function not only of the difficulty of the text. but also of its integrity. For if the text is without integrity (a textuality, as the Newest Critics like to say), then the strength of any reading, or as some would prefer, misreading, is in the willfully creative authority of the critic. It does not reside in the combination of scholarly and critical powers that presuppose the ultimate integrity and intelligibility of the text.

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