Summer in Baden-Baden

Rating:
Summary: An intense and quintessentially Russian novel.
Review: Almost claustrophobic in its intensity, Tsypkin's recreation of the frustration, and even paranoia, of Dostoevsky during one summer in Baden-Baden, in which he attempts to gamble his way out of debt, is a masterpiece, newly published twenty years after its author's death. With sensitivity and a feeling for suffering which may have come from similar frustration, Tsypkin reveals Dostoevsky's inner life, showing us a sensitive but driven man who is also insecure, rude, and arrogant, a man who dominates his wife, a man who suffers from the aftereffects of his imprisonment and his epilepsy, a man virulently anti-Jewish and anti-German and in the grip of compulsive gambling--and a man with whom every reader will ultimately feel empathy, if not complete sympathy.

The story line is deceptively simple. An unidentified narrator, a great admirer of Dostoevsky, is traveling by train to various sites associated with Dostoevsky. As he travels, he reads a Dostoevsky novel, musing about characters in Dostoevsky's novels and events in his life, his honeymoon and marriage, his remarkably supportive second wife, and his associations or wished-for associations with other Russian authors, such as Turgenev. The narrator's additional musings on the forces which eventually impel some later authors, like Solzhenitsyn, to seek exile, while other authors remain behind, bring Russian literary history up to date, expanding the novel's scope beyond that of Dostoevsky and his contemporaries and giving some historical context to Tsypkin's own writing.

Contributing to the dark and intense moodiness of the novel is its style. Single sentences, full of unique images but sometimes two pages long, drive the narrative and the reader along, with the insistence of the train ride which opens the novel. Because each of these sentences is often a single, extended paragraph, there are almost no visual breaks to provide respite from solid type, which completely fills each page and compels the reader to read every word. The writing is so strong, so energetic, and so fresh, however, that most readers will find themselves speeding to keep up with the narrative, the grayness of the text disappearing as Tsypkin's lively images emerge and his characters come to life. This is a challenging and utterly fascinating novel, a startling new work which has earned a place in Russian literary history.

Rating:
Summary: Love
Review: I would not recommend this book for those who have not read Dostoevesky's major works or are not familiar with Dostoevesky's life. There are passages which can get very confusing if you just dive into this novel without prior knowledge of Dostoevesky. To ease matters for readers, Dostoevesky (in his real life) was sent to a Russian labor camp duirng his early years, often have coughing fits, was a compulsive gambler, was often in debts, and relied on his writings to pay off his debts. Tsypkin used this biography of Dostoevesky to craft a fantastical novel that mirrored Dostevesky's real life.
The main theme is centered on the relationship between Dostoevesky and his young, always forgiving wife Anna. The strong points in this novel are the scences where Dostoevesky have several of his fits and how Anna stayed patient and forgiving. Tsypkin was very vivid in detailing the ups and downs of their marriage, and some scences could pack an emotional wallop for readers.

Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece
Review: It is a shame that Leonid Tsypkin was unable to write more than he did. This is one of the best books I have read in the last ten years. The story of Dostoevsky becomes the author's own story as well. I would suggest reading Dostoevsky's The Gambler first and then read this. Both works are not long and both are masterpieces. The two inform each other in quite an interesting fashion. Either way, your time will not be wasted reading Summer in Baden-Baden.

Rating:
Summary: Russian novel on love and suffering
Review: Leonid Tsypkin never saw his work published in his lifetime. For him, the posthumous SUMMER IN BADEN BADEN was a matter of honor that everything of a factual nature in the novel is true to the story and the circumstances of the real lives it evolves. It creatively proposes a two-fold narrative that travels back and forth in time from the start. The "presence" was wintertime. The narrator is on a train bound for Leningrad (once and future St. Petersburg) in mid April 1867. A flashback in time takes Tsypkin to the Dostoyevskys, who have just left St. Petersburg and were on their way to Dresden. Tsypkin, in what perspicacious and punctilious nature of a physician, thoroughly researched account of their travels and the passages where he described his own engagement are wholly autobiographical.

The originality of SUMMER IN BADEN BADEN lies in the way it swiftly moves from the dislocation of the narrator to the life of the peripatetic Dostoyevskys. Such dreamy nature does not clearly mark out a plot but delivers a sense of dreamy consciousness. The underlying framework is simple: Tsypkin, in his dream world, will stay in Leningrad for a few days, embarking on a solitary Dostoevsky pilgrimage that will end in a visit to the house where the writer died. In the other narrative, the newly wed Dostoevsky just began their impecunious travels.

SUMMER IN BADEN BADEN delivers a striking mental tour of Russian reality, making the novel a mere worship of Dostoevsky a rash understatement. Taken for granted were the sufferings of the Soviet era, from the Great Terror to the narrator's present: the purge of scholars, the unreasonable late-night arrest, the shortage of provisions, and inescapably the stories of the Leningrad Blockade. Tsypkin meticulously followed traces of Dostoevsky and his characters and summoned vivid memories from the past. He took pictures of the Raskolnikov house, of the old pawnbroker's house, of Sonechka's house and of buildings where Dostoevsky had lived during the darkest and most clandestine period of his life in the years immediately following threat of being stopped for filming unsuitable objects. Tsypkin even lingered around the spot where some drunken lout who punched him in the face overtook Dostoevsky. The victim begged the court to mitigate punishment on his assailant.

It is through the prism of Anna's excruciating grief that Tsypkin recreates the long deathbed hours in this book about love, married love and the love of literature. Dostoevsky had a difficult time believing that Anna Grigoryevna would become his wife and stenographer (taking down in shorthand words what he dictated to her) and remain in his house forever. She seemed to have yet felt the power she had already gained over and imbued into him. So much of Dostoevsky's debaucherous gambling had left Anna overwhelmed and frustrated. But the depth of the suffering and humiliation only galvanized and brought to the full actuality love and passion. Baden Baden became a symbol of nostalgia for the Dostoevskys.


Rating:
Summary: Two novelists a century apart on different vectors
Review: Leonid Tsypkin was a research physician with an amazing gift for creating beautiful streams of words. His novel Summer in Baden-Baden is about compulsion -- his own compulsion to understand Fyodor Dostoevsky and Dostoevsky's compulsion to gamble. Both men sacrifice much to feed their compulsions.

Tsypkin imagines an aging Dostoevsky bereft of most of his creative powers, but still trying to live the life of a Russian literary giant. Dostoevsky travels with his young wife first to Berlin and then to Baden-Baden. Along the way, Tsypkin spares us none of Dostoevsky's refined prejudices. Ironically, Dostoevsky has a pronounced prejudice against Jews, and Tsypkin is a Jew. Dostoevsky also has a prejudice against Germans, yet he and his wife travel to Germany for respite from their financial and familial obligations in Russia.

Some of Tsypkin's most beautiful prose is devoted to private scenes between Dostoevsky and his wife. A subtheme of the novel is Dostoevsky's compulsive infatuation with his wife, and the love-making scenes are movingly limned.

As an imagined biography of Dostoevsky, the book conveys a useful outline of the his life. Details, accompanied by photographs, provide the reader with firm reference points. Always hovering in the background for those who have read them are Dostoevsky's great novels.

We can all regret that Leonid Tsypkin wrote so little. His style is unique. Some sentence run to a page or more, but they are captivating and fresh. It is hard to imagine the personal discipline, the personal compulsion to write, that must have been Tsypkin's. His life in Soviet Russia was so bounded, so fragile, so lacking in personal space. How did he do it? We can only shake our heads and wonder and be glad.

By all means, get this book and read it. If you have never read one of Dostoevsky's novels, read one first -- I recommend either The Idiot or Crime & Punishment as an introduction to Dostoevsky.

Rating:
Summary: Dostoevsky in exile
Review: Leonid Tsypkin, a leading Russian medical researcher, wrote one novel, Summer in Baden-Baden, before he officially asked the Soviet government for a visa allowing him to go to Israel. He did not get the visa, and for the unpatriotic act of asking to leave the Socialist Paradise he lost his job and shortly thereafter died of a massive heart attack.

Dostoevsky would have understood. The great Russian novelist is the major character of the novel, a man forced out of Russia by a veritable horde of creditors while trying to support a new wife and a family of deadbeat relatives that could give parasites a good name. The story follows the narrator, who is never named, a modern day [1970's] Russian Jew who is traveling by train to important Dostoevsky sites and contemplating the writer's importance in modern Russia, including dealing with Dostoevsky's vicious anti-Semitism and the odd fact that most of his greatest modern critics are Jewish, and Dostoevsky himself, as he tries to write, make money, and deal with his humiliating addiction to the roulette wheel.

The stories track and intertwine in an unique, almost Proustian, style, involving long sentences that go on for pages at a time and shift from the past to present and back again without stopping or explaining why the shift is occurring. The style, however, allows Tsypkin to make a point in the present and illustrate the point by shifting to Dostoevsky's life. Once the reader gets used to the style; for me I finally felt comfortable with it some twenty or thirty pages into the book; the overall effect is dazzling.

That Leonid Tsypkin only wrote this one book is a major loss for Russian literature in particular and for world literature in general. This book displays a massive talent crushed by the brutal needs of a totalitarian society. In an otherwise great book the one objection is Susan Sontag's foreword. She means well, but she is so intent on proclaiming the greatness of this book that she forgets that Tsypkin can do that by himself; reading her forward almost put me off reading the book itself. Read it after you've read the book.

Rating:
Summary: Dostoevsky in exile
Review: Leonid Tsypkin, a leading Russian medical researcher, wrote one novel, Summer in Baden-Baden, before he officially asked the Soviet government for a visa allowing him to go to Israel. He did not get the visa, and for the unpatriotic act of asking to leave the Socialist Paradise he lost his job and shortly thereafter died of a massive heart attack.

Dostoevsky would have understood. The great Russian novelist is the major character of the novel, a man forced out of Russia by a veritable horde of creditors while trying to support a new wife and a family of deadbeat relatives that could give parasites a good name. The story follows the narrator, who is never named, a modern day [1970's] Russian Jew who is traveling by train to important Dostoevsky sites and contemplating the writer's importance in modern Russia, including dealing with Dostoevsky's vicious anti-Semitism and the odd fact that most of his greatest modern critics are Jewish, and Dostoevsky himself, as he tries to write, make money, and deal with his humiliating addiction to the roulette wheel.

The stories track and intertwine in an unique, almost Proustian, style, involving long sentences that go on for pages at a time and shift from the past to present and back again without stopping or explaining why the shift is occurring. The style, however, allows Tsypkin to make a point in the present and illustrate the point by shifting to Dostoevsky's life. Once the reader gets used to the style; for me I finally felt comfortable with it some twenty or thirty pages into the book; the overall effect is dazzling.

That Leonid Tsypkin only wrote this one book is a major loss for Russian literature in particular and for world literature in general. This book displays a massive talent crushed by the brutal needs of a totalitarian society. In an otherwise great book the one objection is Susan Sontag's foreword. She means well, but she is so intent on proclaiming the greatness of this book that she forgets that Tsypkin can do that by himself; reading her forward almost put me off reading the book itself. Read it after you've read the book.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Summer in Baden-Baden is a beautiful and almost too brief masterpiece which tells two intertwined stories seamlessly. The first tells the story of the nameless narrator and Dostoyevsky admirer as he retraces the steps Dostoyevsky and his new wife took in the 1860s--the second story. The narrator's admiration for Dostoyevsky is not strong enough to enable him to conceal the underside of Dostoyevsky's personality--the obsessive gambling, the cruelty to his wife, the anti-Semitism. The narration itself is beautful--the light, almost humorous tone is wonderful and manages to carry off multi-page paragraphs without losing the reader. This is a rich little treasure. Enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Summer in Baden-Baden is a beautiful and almost too brief masterpiece which tells two intertwined stories seamlessly. The first tells the story of the nameless narrator and Dostoyevsky admirer as he retraces the steps Dostoyevsky and his new wife took in the 1860s--the second story. The narrator's admiration for Dostoyevsky is not strong enough to enable him to conceal the underside of Dostoyevsky's personality--the obsessive gambling, the cruelty to his wife, the anti-Semitism. The narration itself is beautful--the light, almost humorous tone is wonderful and manages to carry off multi-page paragraphs without losing the reader. This is a rich little treasure. Enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: A Lost Masterpiece Found
Review: SUMMER IN BADEN-BADEN is one of the most beautiful and intelligent books ever written. It is, without a doubt, a masterpiece and so it pains me to see so few reviews of it here. I can't imagine why people complain that "there is nothing good to read" yet ignore beautiful books like this one.

SUMMER IN BADEN-BADEN is really two stories woven into one. The first story, written in the "present" of the book, revolves around the author's train journey to St. Petersburg to see the apartment of his literary idol, Dostoevsky.

The second story revolves around Dostoevsky, himself, and his bride, Anna. It takes place during the summer of 1867 when the newly married Dostoevsky's summered in the German resort town of Baden-Baden. Although Dostoevsky spent much of his time drinking, gambling and spending his wife's money (even to the extent of pawning her jewels), Anna never wavered from her all-consuming love for her husband. Instead of becoming angry, she nurtured the wayward Dostoevsky and comforted him during his attacks of grand mal epilepsy...a condition that would plague him for the rest of his life.

It's obvious that Tsypkin adored Dostoevsky and his work and that he was intimately familiar with all of the wonderful characters that Dostoevsky had created. The intertwining of the two narratives (that of Tsypkin's journey and that of the Dostoevsky's summer in Baden-Baden) give the book a dreamy, hallucinatory quality that I loved and that I've found in only one other book to date...Anna Banti's marvelous masterpiece, ARTEMISIA. As Tsypkin relates the facts of his train journey and the Dostoevsky's disastrous summer, fact and fantasy also intertwine and blur. This is all to the good, however, and give the novel a nebulous quality that I found absolutely gorgeous.

Although I found this book very sad (Dostoevsky was in the process of destroying himself and, even though Tsypkin adored Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky was violently anti-Jewish), I didn't find it at all dark. Instead, I found it beautiful and containing a distinctly ephemeral quality, something that lifts it out of the realm of "very good literature" into "a true masterpiece."

Tsypkin wrote long, convoluted sentences with ideas and symbols and metaphors all revolving and twining around each other. His prose is as as crystalline as a snowflake on a cold winter's day, however, and the book's fluidity and readability cannot be overstated.

Susan Sontag's preface cannot be overlooked, either. It gives much insight into the life of Tsypkin and the writing of this gorgeous book and, her preface is, in itself, quite moving. Reading it will definitely add to your enjoyment of reading Tsypkin's lovely prose.

SUMMER IN BADEN-BADEN is, perhaps, the most beautiful book I have ever read. It's stunning, gorgeous, limpid, hallucinatory, dreamy, intelligent...in short, it's a masterpiece of literature that is also unique.

Anyone who loves beautiful prose, anyone interested is Russian literature or Dostoevsky and especially readers who love highly literay books couldn't fail to fall in love with SUMMER IN BADEN-BADEN. This book will always be among my "top ten" favorites of all time. I look forward to revisiting it time and time again.