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    The Eternal Husband
    The Eternal Husband
    The Eternal Husband
    Ebook202 pages4 hours

    The Eternal Husband

    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    After a brief military career, the illustrious Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky quickly turned to writing as a profession with the publication of his first novel, "Poor Folk," in 1846. This novel sparked a literary career that would eventually cement Dostoyevsky's reputation as one of the greatest novelists of the nineteenth century. Early participation in a literary/political group landed the writer in exile in Siberia for nearly a decade, an experience which had a profound influence on Dostoyevsky's understanding of fate, the suffering of human beings, and resulted in a powerful religious conversion experience. Dostoyevsky's works are marked by his penetrating exploration of psychology and morality, which are today cited as highly 'existentialist.' The Eternal Husband is one of Dostoevsky's most refined works, and represents a lifelong meditation on the duality of human consciousness through the lives of the husband and the ex-lover of a recently deceased woman.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2011
    ISBN9781420939606
    Author

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. He died in 1881 having written some of the most celebrated works in the history of literature, including Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov.

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    Reviews for The Eternal Husband

    4/5

    156 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A restless sense of being adrift plagued me the last few days. Watching American Gods helped. This brilliant novel cauterized my wounds and afforded me some welcome elan.

      The Eternal Husband is wicked psychology. One could compare it with Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata as case studies on marriage. Dostoevsky appears more concerned with guilt as a driving force in behavior, whereas Lev was perhaps waxing fanciful, but nonetheless he blames the dames. Dostoevsky isn't misogynistic, he aptly fins some people ill disposed to fidelity and others incapable of an effective response to such.

      There's much to embrace in these 140 pages, even if one's not blessed with white nights. There's drunkenness and brain fevers. There's even a hanging.
    • 2/5
      The 2 stars are for the Jimcin Recordings audiobook edition from the mid-1980's which was added to Audible with a date of 2008. This is not recommended as a first introduction to this Dostoyevsky novella.The robotic narration with a New England accent is likely to put you off Dostoyevsky and audiobooks altogether. So it is better to start with a current translation such as The Eternal Husband and Other Stories by Pevear & Volokhonsky.If you can deal with the challenge, and aren't operating any dangerous machinery at the time, then at least the whiney snivelling tone for the "eternal husband" Trusotsky does hit the right note in the performance here.
    • 4/5
      Another great classic from Dostoyevsky!!
    • 4/5
      There is no question that Dostoyevsky is a master, as far as getting inside his protagonist's brain and dissecting it into the most unthinkable yet quite plausible details. I just couldn't help but practically "see" the instances of mental torment as Velchaninov, "a former society man", recollects certain grave indiscretions and even insignificant peccadilloes that humiliate and haunt him relentlessly. It actually makes him physically sick. (Many of us can relate to that, we have all been there - tormented by the past... Not to say that it could ever be to this extent, so sinister - this is Dostoyevsky's realm...). Enter Trusotsky - and mental war begins. Now guilt drives Velchaninov almost to madness and to involuntary decisions of repentance at the hand of the person whom he so cruelly cheated long ago. And here's a small paradox - the novella is predictable and unpredictable at the same time. And also a bit stretched out, it seemed. Probably to deepen the sense of no escape. The ending is rather ironic.
    • 4/5
      This is called "the eternal husband" but it's told from the point of view of the "eternal bachelor". In fact the novel opens with him, so right away we know it's really his story and not the eternal husband's. The title could be "what the eternal husband did to the eternal bachelor one hot Petersburg summer". (Strange, one doesn't think of St Petersburg as having hot summers...)But boy is this one hot! With tempers and passions, turmoils and paranoias!The eternal husband is that man who is born to be a husband, born to stay by his wife's side, even if she betrays him (which this one does, with our eternal bachelor, among others). (And born to become husband to another, should the first wife be no longer there...)The eternal bachelor is of course the man who never marries.What happens when the wife of the eternal husband dies, and the eternal husband seeks out the eternal bachelor who was once his wife's lover (does he know, or not?)That's our story, and it's a modern one, despite having been written in 1871 (in an introduction Alberto Moravia goes so far as to say that it's a typical 20th century comic novel, -- and therefore ahead of its time --, as opposed to the typical 19th century "pathetic" novel). Who says old novels can't speak to our day? (maybe no one, but I definitely hear talk of needing new forms because we live in a new and different age).There are no cars, no phones, no internet in this book (or forms that speak to those technologies), but it has people, (i.e. us), and people are the same time ever after.
    • 3/5
      This novella was passable, but that was all. I did not feel especially involved with the narrative tone, the characters, or the plot-line. Overall, it felt like a lesser work from the well known Dostoyevsky and I would not recommend it unless you are a very large fan of him for the sake of curiosity.2.5 stars.
    • 4/5
      Dostoevsky’s story explores the relationship between two very different men - Trusotsky seems to be a complete idiot - drunk, feverish and babbling inconsistencies - one of those strange characters that the novels of Dostoevsky are populated with - Velchaninov is the respected, wealthy, bourgeois Petersborg man. Velchaninov once had an affair with Trusotsky’s wife - she’s now dead and the two men meet many years later. Velchaninov is not sure if Trusotsky knows about the affair and wants to find out more about Trusotsky - Trusotsky on the other hand seems both fascinated and repelled by Velchaninov.It might be labelled as a comedy - but it’s a black one - it's the unsettling laughter - there’s a very fine line between the hilarious and the hysterical and horrific here - the absurd cat-and-mouse psychotic game these two old “friends” have going on escalates and end in a bloody confrontation.
    • 5/5
      Gripping, fascinating, darkly humourous, totally character-driven - this is vintage Dostoevsky. It didn't take long to read, but I'm pretty sure I'll be re-reading this one at some point. Highly recommended.

    Book preview

    The Eternal Husband - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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