Between Death and Resurrection : Dostoevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead on the Eve of the Peasant Emancipation

Abstract: This dissertation is a study of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the House of the Dead (1860–1862), a semi-documentary rendition of life in a Siberian prison of the 1850s. The work is read against the background of the pivotal historical event coinciding with its writing and publication: the peasant emancipation of 1861. On the basis of materials from contemporary newspapers and periodicals, the dissertation proposes that the years 1857–1862 saw the evolution a public “discourse of liberation” characterized by the fluctuating use of specific symbolism. The act of emancipation is conceptualized as a civic “resurrection” of the Russian people, whose life under serfdom is equated with imprisonment in the “land of the dead.” This discourse of liberation is shown to intersect with Dostoevsky’s text, which incorporates and adapts its central metaphors. Thereby, the uncertainty of the public mood in the transitional period of the early emancipation era reinforces the fundamental ambivalence of Dostoevsky’s poetics: notes of joyous anticipation and triumph are carried over into the work along with strong undercurrents of doubt and disillusionment. The narrative progression towards resurrection, culminating in the book’s final scene of release from the “dead house” of the prison, is undercut and complicated by a network of parallels and resonances.House of the Dead is also examined in relation to the genre of Russian “peasant fiction” prevalent in the decade leading up to the emancipation. Dostoevsky is shown to meet the challenge of truthfully representing the peasant voice in literature both through documentary methods, employing the so-called “Siberian notebook” of his prison years, and through fictionalization, as in the interpolated short story “Akulka’s Husband.” The narration of “Akulka’s Husband” is interpreted as an expression of the frustrated struggle of the peasant voice towards clarity and self-understanding – an unfulfilled, stumbling verbal quest for mental emancipation. It is also argued that Dostoevsky drew on two genres of Russian folklore in order to create an authentic plot and mode of characterization for his “village tale:” the tragic ballad of wife murder and the comic dancing song about the cuckolded husband. The result is a dissonant tale filled with tension, where comedy acts as the catalyst for tragedy, and silence emerges as the chief medium for truth.Finally, the dissertation analyzes the role of popular laughter in House of the Dead, focusing on the multiple ambivalent episodes where comic performance is paired with violence. These episodes are linked with elements of traditional Russian laughter culture and folk theatre. Internally connected through a series of echoes and inversions, they are shown to be integral to the book’s dual trajectories of death and resurrection. In his renditions of comic spectacle, Dostoevsky reveals the existence of two forces of laughter: one destructive and corrupting, one creative and redemptive. While both rely on the irrational, convulsive and liberating nature of laughter, each is representative of a distinct potential in the human soul for damnation and salvation.