a question about Dostoevsky and prisons

Sun Dec 16 16:59:40 UTC 2012

I searched the text of the Garnett translation available on Amazon and
couldn't find the English version mentioned in *Yale Quotations* there,
either. Assuming FD really is the source, I wonder if this isn't something
from his journalistic writings, maybe Diary of a Writer.

Cheers,
David P.

 * * * * * * * * * *
David Powelstock
Assoc. Prof. of Russian and Comparative Literature
Chair, Comparative Literature
Brandeis University
Waltham, MA 02453

On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 10:28 AM, dusty wilmes <upthera44 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I found the following related passage in another English translation
> available for free online
> (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37536/37536-h/37536-h.htm --
> translator is Bramont, I believe), which might help you track down the
> passage in the original that Constance Garnett turned into the famous
> phrase. This passage is 2-3 pages after the beginning Chapter 3 (The
> Hospital):
>
> "That the possibility of such license has a contagious effect on the
> whole of society there is no doubt. A society which looks upon such
> things with an indifferent eye, is already infected to the marrow. In
> a word, the right granted to a man to inflict corporal punishment on
> his fellow-men, is one of the plague-spots of our society. It is the
> means of annihilating all civic spirit. Such a right contains in germ
> the elements of inevitable, imminent decomposition.
>
> Society despises an executioner by trade, but not a lordly
> executioner. Every manufacturer, every master of works, must feel an
> irritating pleasure when he reflects that the workman he has beneath
> his orders is dependent upon him with the whole of his family. A
> generation does not, I am sure, extirpate so quickly what is
> hereditary in it. A man cannot renounce what is in his blood, what has
> been transmitted to him with his mother's milk; these revolutions are
> not accomplished so quickly. It is not enough to confess one's fault.
> That is very little! Very little indeed! It must be rooted out, and
> that is not done so quickly."
>
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 1:49 AM, Hugh Olmsted <hugh_olmsted at comcast.net>
> wrote:
> > Sasha, Bob, et al.,
> > Playing around with back-translation into Russian of Bob's English
> quote, it
> > is easy in Google.ru to find the following Russian text widely
> attributed to
> > Dostoevsky: "Если общество хочет проверить уровень своей цивилизации,
> пусть
> > заглянет в тюрьму".  But nowhere that I've seen is the attribution
> spelled
> > out - no specific work of Dostoevsky's ever seems to be mentioned, let
> alone
> > any more specific locus.
> > I've gone through all the other works of Dostoevsky as listed in the
> > Lib.Ru/Klassika (URL http://az.lib.ru/d/dostoewskij_f_m/), searching for
> > significant parts of this text, to no avail.  A more intense search
> there of
> > Записки из мервого дома - trying out variant grammatical forms, close
> > synonyms, and the like - also comes up with zilch.
> > Maybe it IS a misattribution, or maybe it springs from a different
> authorial
> > version/edition of Записки than what is standardly available ??  At any
> > rate, in case it may spare somebody the work of repeating these steps,
> here
> > is the report on what I've tried.
> > Best,
> > Hugh Olmsted
> >
> >
> > On Dec 15, 2012, at 8:32 PM, Robert A. Rothstein wrote:
> >
> > On 12/15/2012 11:38 AM, Sasha Spektor wrote:
> >
> > The phrase "По состоянию тюрем можно судить о состоянии общества" has
> been
> > attributed to Dostoevsky and said to be from "Записки из Мертвого Дома."
> > It's not there, at least neither I nor my word search can find it.  Did
> he
> > say it somewhere else?  Is it an apocryphal attribution?  I would really
> > appreciate your collective wisdom in this case.
> >
> > The Yale Book of Quotations, ed. Fred R. Shapiro, quotes "The degree of
> > civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons" from
> > Constance Garnett's translation of The House of the Dead.
> >
> > Bob Rothstein
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>
> --
> Justin Wilmes
> Ph. D. Student/Graduate Teaching Associate
> Dept. of Slavic and E. European Languages and Literatures
> Ohio State University
>
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