Table of Contents
Title Page
TRANSLATORS’ NOTES
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE
Chapter One
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
Chapter Two
I
II
III
IV
Chapter Three
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
Chapter Four
I
II
III
IV
Chapter Five
I
II
III
IV
Chapter Six
I
II
III
IV
Chapter Seven
I
II
III
IV
Chapter Eight
I
II
III
Chapter Nine
I
II
III
IV
V
Chapter Ten
I
II
III
IV
V
PART TWO
Chapter One
I
II
III
IV
Chapter Two
I
II
III
Chapter Three
I
II
III
IV
Chapter Four
I
II
Chapter Five
I
II
III
Chapter Six
I
II
III
IV
Chapter Seven
I
II
III
Chapter Eight
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
Chapter Nine
I
II
III
IV
PART THREE
Chapter One
I
II
III
Chapter Two
I
II
III
IV
V
Chapter Three
I
II
III
IV
Chapter Four
I
II
III
IV
Chapter Five
I
II
III
Chapter Six
I
II
III
Chapter Seven
I
II
III
Chapter Eight
I
II
Chapter Nine
I
II
III
IV
V
Chapter Ten
I
II
III
IV
Chapter Eleven
I
II
III
IV
Chapter Twelve
I
II
III
IV
V
Chapter Thirteen - Conclusion
I
II
III
NOTES
ENDNOTES
ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS
Copyright Page
TRANSLATORS’ NOTES
LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
Russian names are composed of first name, patronymic (from the father’s first name), and family name. Formal address requires the use of first name and patronymic; diminutives (Arkasha, Lizochka, Sonya) are commonly used among family and intimate friends. The following is a list of the principal characters in The Adolescent, with diminutives and epithets. In Russian pronunciation, the stressed vowel is always long and unstressed vowels are very short.
Dolgorúky, Arkády Makárovich (Arkásha, Arkáshenka, Arkáshka): the adolescent, “author” of the novel.
———, Makár Ivánovich: his legal father.
———, Sófya Andréevna (Sónya, Sophie): his mother.
———, Lizavéta Makárovna (Líza, Lízochka, Lizók): his sister.
Versílov, Andréi Petróvich: natural father of Arkady and Liza.
———, Ánna Andréevna: Versilov’s daughter by his first marriage.
———, Andréi Andréevich: the kammerjunker, Versilov’s son by his first marriage.
Akhmákov, Katerína Nikoláevna (Kátya): young widow of General Akhmakov.
———, Lýdia (no patronymic): her stepdaughter. Sokólsky, Prince Nikolái Ivánovich: the old prince, Mme. Akhmakov’s father.
Prutkóv, Tatyána Pávlovna: the “aunt,” friend of the Versilov family.
Sokólsky, Prince Sergéi Petróvich (Seryózha): the young prince, no relation to Prince Nikolai Ivanovich.
Lambért, Mauríce: schoolfriend of Arkady’s, a Frenchman.
Verdáigne, Alphonsíne de (Alphonsina, Alphonsinka): Lambert’s girlfriend.
Dárya Onísimovna (no family name; her name changes to Nastásya Egórovna in Part Three): mother of the young suicide Ólya (diminutive of Ólga).
Vásin, Grísha (diminutive of Grigóry; no patronymic): friend of Arkady’s.
Stebelkóv (no first name or patronymic): Vasin’s stepfather. Pyótr Ippolítovich (no last name): Arkady’s landlord. Nikolái Semyónovich (no last name): Arkady’s tutor in Moscow.
———, Márya Ivánovna: Nikolai Semyonovich’s wife. Trishátov, Pétya [i.e., Pyótr] (no patronymic): the pretty boy. Andréev, Nikolái Semyónovich: le grand dadais.
Semyón Sídorovich (Sídorych; no last name): the pockmarked one.
A NOTE ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF ST. PETERSBURG
The city was founded in 1703 by a decree of the emperor Peter the Great and built on the delta of the river Neva, which divides into three main branches – the Big Neva, the Little Neva, and the Nevka – as it flows into the Gulf of Finland. On the left bank of the Neva is the city center, where the Winter Palace, the Senate, the Admiralty, the Summer Garden, the theaters, and the main thoroughfares such as Nevsky Prospect, Bolshaya Millionnaya, and Bolshaya Morskaya are located. On the right bank of the Neva before it divides is the area known as the Vyborg side; the right bank between the Nevka and the Little Neva is known as the Petersburg side, where the Peter and Paul Fortress, the oldest structure of the city, stands; between the Little Neva and the Big Neva is Vassilievsky Island. To the south, some fifteen miles from the city, is the suburb of Tsarskoe Selo, where the empress Catherine the Great built an imposing palace and many of the gentry had summer houses.
TRANSLATIONS OF DOSTOEVSKY
BY PEVEAR AND VOLOKHONSKY
The Adolescent (2003)
The Idiot (2002)
Demons (1994)
Notes from Underground (1993)
Crime and Punishment (1992)
The Brothers Karamazov (1990)
INTRODUCTION
In the early 1870s, the radical satirist M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin declared that in Russia the family novel was dead: “The family, that warm and cosy element . . . which once gave the novel its content, has vanished from sight . . . The novel of contemporary man finds its resolution in the street, on the public way, anywhere but in the home.” In 1875, however, two novels began to appear serially in rival journals: Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina in the conservative Russian Messenger, and Dostoevsky’s The Adolescent in the populist Notes of the Fatherland. Though they have nothing else in common, both are family novels in excelsis. Their appearance at that time suggests that, far from having vanished from sight, the family was still the mirror of Russian social life, and the fate of the family was a key to Russia’s destiny.
Tolstoy defied the radicals by portraying the ordered life of his own class, the hereditary aristocracy, and the tragedy of its disruption – that is, by looking back at a world which, as Dostoevsky saw, had become a fantasy. “But you know,” Dostoevsky wrote to his friend Apollon Maikov, “this is all landowner’s literature. It has said everything it had to say (magnificently in Leo Tolstoy). But this word, a landowner’s in the highest degree, was the last. A new word, replacing the landowner’s, does not exist yet.” In The Adolescent, which he conceived in part as an answer to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky found that new word, portraying what he calls the “accidental family” of his time, the reality behind Tolstoy’s grand “mirage.” In Dostoevsky, His Life and Work, Konstantin Mochulsky draws the ultimate conclusion about the family chronicle as Dostoevsky conceived it. The main theme of The Adolescent, he writes, is “the problem of communion: man is determined by his character, but his fate is defined in freedom, in spite of his character. The influence of one personality on another is limitless; the roots of human interaction go down into metaphysical depths; the violation of this organic collectivity is reflected in social upheavals and political catastrophes.”1 What Saltykov-Shchedrin saw taking place on the public way had its cause in what was taking place in the fundamental unity of the family, which could still serve as the image of Russian society in its inner, spiritual dimension.