Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead: Review
by Armando Ortiz
“This utterly new world, hitherto unknown, the strangeness of some of the facts, some of the particular observations on this lost tribe of men fascinated me, and I read some of what he had written about it with curiosity. It is, of course, possible that I am mistaken.” -Dostoevsky
This short piece will focus on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The House of the Dead, and will discuss the symbolism that both carry and mesh well with the overall message that humanity is the same wherever you go. Despite the fact that every valley has its own unique history, we remain stuck here with each other in the same home that we call earth.
The roots behind my decision to pick up another Fyodor Dostoevsky novel is quite simple, but of course things do not just happen that easy, they have a life of their own, and one is influenced by all that revolves around here, there and everywhere, but to make things a bit to the point explanations will be brief. I have read several Dostoevsky novels, initially being exposed to him via a professor while studying in South Korea’s Yonsei University back in 2001. The first novel that I tackled was Notes from the Underground and quickly moved on to the Brothers Karamazov. Fast forward to 2015, where I found myself listening to A$AP Rocky songs on YouTube, wanting to see if there were any interesting videos that I could find, before acquiring his albums, and long behold came to discover one video where the characters were dressed in classical Victorian fashion of the 1800s. At first I was confused, thinking that what I saw was odd, but at the same time the track that played, Palace, matched the scenes that were used in the film clip. Yet, even Rocky’s track from his album Live.Love.A$AP is also in many ways a tale of the topics that will be discussed in this essay.
The name of the film used is called Russian Ark and was done by Alexander Sokurov. Hence, I ended up watching the film soon afterwards. The two main characters wander around a massive palace where a huge party takes place. In the film, a French composer and a Russian soldier wander around St. Petersburg’s Hermitage or in other words a Russian national monument. It turns out that the museum contains pieces of art that are 300 years old and have survived despite the epic invasions of Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. I was enchanted by both the scope and ambition of the film, but also the many practical messages that people could gather from the film, one being that meaning depends on the perceiver and one’s views of how life and culture are not necessarily absolute.
As a result of listening to A$AP Rocky’s track, I ended up going deeper into the rabbit hole of Russian culture and history, but this generally happens with anything we find fascinating or interesting. I went on to read about St. Petersburg, learning about the art festivals that are still held during the summer, the biggest being called White Nights, which turned out to be the title of one of Dostoevsky’s short novels of the same name, White Nights, which further fed the flames of inquisitiveness and made me read a bit more on his life in the northernmost European city of Russia. So, as a result of those serendipitous discoveries, I once again found myself wandering around Downtown Los Angeles and walking into The Last Bookstore, where by chance I found The House of the Dead. I had gone there in hopes of finding something written by him, yet not knowing what that would be. As soon as the purchase was made I walked the 6 blocks back to where my car was parked in Little Tokyo, and on my way there began reading the introduction to the novel. I found the moment compelling, and during my walk reflected with surprise how a simple music track was changing the direction of my literary currents.
Dostoevsky’s novel House of the Dead is fascinating and enlightening, because it touches on life inside a prison colony, but in many ways the story seems to be an allegory of how humans live on this earth and our time here together creates all kinds of good and bad situations. It tells the story of a nobleman who’d become a prisoner as a result of murdering his wife after only one year of marriage. Soon afterwards, Aleksandr Petrocvich is sent to a colony in Siberia to do hard time for a couple of years. After serving his sentence Aleksandr settles in the neighboring town and keeps a journal telling of his life in the penal colony. The person who introduces Aleksandr to the readers is the narrator retelling what the author wrote in his private journals, which the landlord was already dumping in the trash. He’d shown interest in Aleksandr, as a person, but had been refused any chance to strike a friendship, and finds his death as an opportunity. He tries to find out more about this mysterious character who’d stayed behind in Siberia to work as a tutor/ teacher and goes to the ex-convicts home to learn more about him and ends up finding his writings. He then proceeds to share this information to the reader, in this case, me.
The novel in many ways deals with mercy and kindness expressed between the people and those in charge of life and death. Even amongst prisoners there was a silent code that gave respect to people who did their time and took responsibility for their actions.
In the House of the Dead a panoramic view of Russia’s realms of control is quickly explained in detail and amongst prisoners with different cultural backgrounds and traditions. It’s in that melting pot of ideas and customs where the main character learns about humanity and human nature. These people were fearless, and tyrannical with one another, but on the other hand it was terrible being alone, so they all compromised to keep the peace. Even though they had to serve their time, they had to do it amongst others that had been damned and punished to the penal colonies, so though not alone, it was a time of great aloneness of the mind. Even in the insanely dirty circumstances they all lived in they had to make communion with others. It was in the moldy atmosphere of condemned human bodies where he discovers the limits of humans and their resilience.
In Russia those in power had no real contact with the common so the head wardens generally had to be fair, treating inmates just slightly above the level of inhumanity and dignity to keep the peace. Again, the warden could not be too cruel with the people he was in charge of keeping locked up. And in general there was a compromise between the work that prisoners did, the food they ate, and with the minimal things that the prison provided. In many ways they were the direct slaves of those in power or in other words property of the state. In Russia, these criminals, worthy of hard labor, were made up of Russian peasants, vagrants, nomads and of people from other kingdoms recently conquered by Russia. Christianity, Islam, Jewish and other religions were practiced in the prison, and though religious expression was generally tolerated it was Orthodox Christianity that permeated all customs. These criminals came from the different realms of Russian power and their crimes ranged from murder, thievery, and vagrancy to political subversion.
Historically the eagle has had a strong influence over the human psyche with many cultures around the world revering this creature of flight as being one of the few animals that is able to reach the highest points in the sky. The symbolism of the eagle is a powerful bridge between allegory and life that is pointed out in the story, and this only came into focus while watching the play La Virgen de Guadalupe. At some point in the play Aztec eagle warriors dance right before the appearance of the virgin de Guadalupe. As the performance unfolded inside the Los Angeles Cathedral, which was mainly made up of dialogues between Diego Garcia, and those in his daily life, a sense of awe came over; it might have been the religious space where the place was taking place, but Dostoevsky’s allegory was coming alive before my eyes. The indigenous dancers brought to mind a scene in the novel where an injured eagle appears within the prison walls.
In a similar, but more powerful fashion we have an eagle that appears in Dostoevsky’s novel that has been injured and despite its broken wings it fights to the death not knowing anything else but to battle, between life and the next life. The inmates are keenly aware that the eagle is injured, so they try to feed it, but the bird of prey puts up a fight. They throw kolaches at it, and though it fights off the presence of these incarcerated men, it hungrily goes after the chunks of bread that land on the ground. In similar fashion, a human will fight to the end, but hunger can break their humility and their pride, and the battle between life and death becomes a real boxing match of the mind. The eagle, having broken wings, kept fighting, and not until the prisoners left it alone did it hop towards the food that lay on the ground.
Again, in the novel, the prisoners notice that the bird is dying but decide that an eagle dying inside the prison was out of the question because the animal had been born and lived in total freedom before its misfortune. So the decision was made to take the eagle out of the prison so that it could at least die in freedom. Likewise the eagle in the story is a representation of nature’s greatest symbol of power, independence, and freedom but it's in an injured state, fighting to the death, limping towards the handouts thrown to it. It fights because of its inherent dignity, but hunger defeats it and we see that as it limps out to get the bread.
In the Russian story there is a wide range of characters from Muslim, Jewish to shaman like and Christian, and within that everyone learned to live with one another and to give homage to the one in power. There is even a character that despite being under the presence of the prison warden engages in his ceremonial ritual and even glorifies his god in the face of the man in charge of the prison. In conclusion, The House of the Dead not only sheds light into the syncretism that happens with people over time when in communion amongst each other. They share and diffuse their traditions amongst each other and learn to live with one another in the house we call earth. Furthermore, Dostoevsky signals to us that a prisoner on a daily basis runs the risk of dying within the prisons that we humans create whether it be religions or political systems, because in the end even ideas or beliefs box people in to systems of power, which further accentuates A$AP Rocky’s track Palace, because despite the track’s name the lyrics point to a different prison, that of material possessions, but to Dostoevsky freedom comes from the determined hope that one day the shackles placed on our ankles purposely or unbeknownst to us will come off.
