Joseph Frank (1918–2013), the eminent literary scholar and biographer of Dostoevsky, died in March 2013 at the age of ninety-four. He was well known for his interpretations of literary modernism, essays on twentieth-century French and German literature, and reflections on the great theorists of the novel. The unique approach and meticulous scholarship of his five-volume study of Dostoevsky (published 1976–2002) made it one of the great achievements in literary scholarship.
On the morning of December 22, 1849, Dostoevsky was condemned to death. Arrested eight months earlier for participation in a radical discussion group, he had languished in prison. Resisting the temptation to soften his fate by implicating others, he read Jane Eyre and wrote his happiest story.
Told nothing of where he was going that chilly morning, he was led from his cell to join other prisoners in a march to the Semenovsky Square. There, amid stakes, scaffolds, and coffins, they were read a sentence of death and offered last rites. Dostoevsky, who was a believer, turned to one of his fellow prisoners and said: “Today we will be in paradise,” but his friend, an atheist and materialist, replied mockingly, “A handful of dust!” At the last possible moment, when the guns were trained on the condemned, an imperial courier galloped up with the news that Tsar Nicholas, defender of the faith and emperor of all the Russias, had commuted their punishment to Siberian imprisonment followed by service in the army. The entire scene had been
