Fyodor Dostoevsky, the author of "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov," ranks among the 19th-century masters.
His novels endure as classics, but his life may have been just as remarkable as his fiction. He was put in front of a firing squad for political activities, only to have his sentence commuted at the last moment. He suffered epileptic seizures throughout his adult life, and he was hounded by creditors and drawn to the gambling table. He was superstitious and religious but plagued by doubts.
Now, in J. M. Coetzee's seventh novel, "The Master of Petersburg," Dostoevsky's life has become fiction.
Mr. Coetzee's task is not an easy one. He risks comparisons not only with Dostoevsky's great works, but also with the three volumes published by Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky's perceptive and meticulous biographer. While Mr. Coetzee, a South African novelist who has won Britain's Booker Prize for fiction, succeeds in portraying a tormented genius, he adds little to what is already known about the Russian writer.
As inspiration for his novel, Mr. Coetzee has drawn upon Dostoevsky's life, letters and novels, most notably "The Devils," which also has been translated as "The Possessed" and "Demons." Still, readers must bear in mind that Mr. Coetzee is a novelist, not a biographer, and he sometimes changes the facts for his own purpose.
The novel begins with Dostoevsky's arrival in St. Petersburg upon hearing of the death of his 21-year-old stepson, Pavel. Dostoevsky, who had been living in Dresden with his second wife and young daughter, returns to Russia in October 1869 -- 10 days after Pavel's death. While battling his own demons -- lust, epilepsy and gambling, to name a few -- he tries to learn what he can about Pavel's "misadventure" and come to terms with their strained relationship.
Dostoevsky did, in fact, have a stepson, but the boy didn't fall from a tower in 1869, as he does in Mr. Coetzee's novel. Pavel lived until 1900, although Mr. Coetzee accurately depicts him as a troubled young man. His mother, Mariya Dmitriyevna Isaev, died in 1864; his father had died a decade earlier. In "Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoevsky," co-editors Frank and David I. Goldstein summarize the father-stepson relationship: "Dostoevsky was at first quite fond of him and assumed responsibility for him after Mariya Dmitriyevna's death. Afterward, however, Dostoevsky became increasingly irritated with his behavior, accusing him of laziness, vanity and rudeness. In the last years of Dostoevsky's life, he had very little contact with Pavel."
Indeed, Dostoevsky's letters reflect a mix of concern and exasperation. In 1868, he wrote to his friend Apollon Maykov: "To leave [Pavel] to his own resources would be callous and stupid of me. It would be cruel. It is tantamount to sending him to his perdition, for he won't be able to cope with it." In another letter to Maykov, dated the same year, Dostoevsky wonders why he hasn't heard from his stepson: "I cannot believe he hates me."
So Mr. Coetzee may have killed off Pavel prematurely, but he did not invent the tension between the two. The fictional Dostoevsky realizes with regret that his last words to Pavel were to admonish him not to ask for any more money and to live within his means.
Conflict between fathers and sons, which was one of the themes of "The Devils," seems to interest Mr. Coetzee as much as it did Dostoevsky. One of Pavel's associates, Sergei Nechaev, rebukes the mourning stepfather: "I always have had a suspicion about fathers, that their real sin, the one they never confess, is greed. They want everything for themselves. They won't hand over the moneybags, even when it's time."
Dostoevsky and Nechaev confront each other in "The Master of Petersburg," and these scenes are among the best in the novel. Nechaev is fanatical and humorless, all too ready to speak for "the people." Dostoevsky, who struggles to understand why Pavel would follow such a destructive spirit, is shaken and depressed by their encounters.
Nechaev tries to prove to Dostoevsky that his stepson was murdered by the authorities, but the writer is skeptical. Was Pavel pushed or did he jump? One of the reasons Dostoevsky went to Petersburg was to learn more about Pavel's "misadventure," but the true cause of his death is left open in Mr. Coetzee's novel.
"The Master of Petersburg" isn't a whodunit, although it isn't hard to figure out why he wrote it. The character of Dostoevsky gives Mr. Coetzee an opportunity to examine the relationship of an author to his subject, a theme he also explored in a 1987 novel, "Foe."
Mr. Coetzee has certainly done his research, and he does breathe life into his main character. The only problem is that the real Dostoevsky was so much more fascinating.
Title: "The Master of Petersburg"
Author: J. M. Coetzee
Publisher: Viking
Length, price: 250 pages, $21.95