Nabokov wrote an article in the NY Review of Books once about Dostoevsky that attacked his writings for several different angles, noting that " even in his day, prostitutes with a heart of gold were an awful cliche "( referring to the heroine in Crime and Punishment).
Nabokov also went off on all other translators of Pushkin in a rather nasty way that made me wonder if he was not a little, ahem, self-serving..( his grandfather had run the prison where they made Dostoevsky believe he was going to be shot, put a sack over his head and then fired a blank in his ear)(or so it goes in one version, in others they just say he was sentenced to be killed by firing squad but wasn't and give no details).
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Dostoyevsky" redirects here. For the surname, see Dostoyevsky (surname).
| Fyodor Dostoyevsky | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Dostoyevsky by Vasily Perov, 1872
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| Born | Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky 11 November 1821 Moscow, Russian Empire |
| Died | 9 February 1881 (aged 59) Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Education | Military Engineering-Technical University, St. Petersburg |
| Period | 1846–81 |
| Genres | Novel, short story, journalism |
| Subjects | Psychology, philosophy, religion |
| Literary movement | Realism |
| Notable work(s) | |
| Spouse(s) |
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| Children | Sonya (1868) Lyubov (1869–1926) Fyodor (1871–1922) Alexey (1875–1878) |
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| Signature |  |
); 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881[b]), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher.
Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the context of
the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of
19th-century Russia. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 when he was 25. His major works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov
(1880). His output consists of eleven novels, three novellas, seventeen
short novels and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him
as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature.[1]Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoyevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837, when he was 15, and around the same time he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. In the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into St. Petersburg's literary circles.
In 1849 he was arrested for his involvement in the Petrashevsky Circle, a secret society of liberal utopians that also functioned as a literary discussion group.[2] He and other members were condemned to death, but at the last moment, a note from Tsar Nicholas I was delivered to the scene of the firing squad, commuting the sentence to four years' hard labour in Siberia. His seizures, which may have started in 1839, increased in frequency there, and he was diagnosed with epilepsy. On his release, he was forced to serve as a soldier, before being discharged on grounds of ill health.
In the following years, Dostoyevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writer's Diary, a collection of his writings. He began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he eventually became one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages. Dostoyevsky influenced a multitude of writers and philosophers, from Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway to Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Contents
Early life
Family background
Maria Dostoyevskaya
Mikhail Dostoyevsky
In 1809 the 20-year-old Mikhail Dostoyevsky enrolled in Moscow's Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy. From there he was assigned to a Moscow hospital, where he served as military doctor, and in 1818 he was appointed senior physician. In 1819 he married Maria Nechayeva. The following year, he took up a post at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor. After the birth of his first two sons, Mikhail and Fyodor, he was promoted to collegiate assessor, a position which raised his legal status to that of the nobility and enabled him to acquire a small estate in Darovoye, a town about 150 km (100 miles) from Moscow, where the family usually spent the summers.[7] Dostoyevsky's parents subsequently had six more children: Varvara (1822–92), Andrei (1825–97), Lyubov (born and died 1829), Vera (1829–96), Nikolai (1831–83) and Aleksandra (1835–89).[8][4][5]
Childhood (1821–1835)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born on 11 November [O.S. 30 October] 1821, the second child of Dr. Mikhail Dostoyevsky and Maria Dostoyevskaya (née Nechayeva). He was raised in the family home in the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, which was in a lower class district on the edges of Moscow.[9] Dostoyevsky encountered the patients, who were at the lower end of the Russian social scale, when playing in the hospital gardens.[10]Dostoyevsky was introduced to literature at an early age. From the age of three, he was read heroic sagas, fairy tales and legends by his nanny, Alena Frolovna, an especially influential figure in his childhood.[11] When he was four his mother used the Bible to teach him to read and write. His parents introduced him to a wide range of literature, including Russian writers Karamzin, Pushkin and Derzhavin; Gothic fiction such as Ann Radcliffe; romantic works by Schiller and Goethe; heroic tales by Cervantes and Walter Scott; and Homer's epics.[12][13] His father's approach to educating the young Dostoyevsky is reported as very strict and harsh,[14] though Dostoyevsky reports that his imagination was brought alive by nightly readings by his parents.[10]
Some of his childhood experiences found their way into his writings. When a nine-year-old girl had been raped by a drunk, he was asked to fetch his father to attend to her. The incident haunted him, and the disturbing desire of a mature man for a young girl is used in The Devils, The Brothers Karamazov, and other writings.[15] An incident involving a family servant, or serf, in the estate in Darovoye, is described in "The Peasant Marey": when the young Dostoyevsky imagines hearing a wolf in the forest, Marey, who is working nearby, comforts him.[16]
Although Dostoyevsky had a delicate physical constitution, standing approximately 1.6 metres or 5 feet 3 inches tall,[17] his parents described him as hot-headed, stubborn and cheeky.[18] In 1833, Dostoyevsky's father, who was strict and profoundly religious, sent him to a French boarding school and then on to the Chermak boarding school, where several people described him as a pale, introverted dreamer and an over-excitable romantic.[19] To pay the school fees, his father borrowed money and extended his private medical practice. Dostoyevsky felt out of place among his aristocratic classmates at the Moscow school, and the experience was later reflected in his works, notably The Adolescent.[20][13]
Youth (1836–1843)
Dostoyevsky disliked the academy, primarily because of his lack of interest in science, mathematics and military engineering and his preference for drawing and architecture. As his friend Konstantin Trutovsky once said, "There was no student in the entire institution with less of a military bearing than F. M. Dostoyevsky. He moved clumsily and jerkily; his uniform hung awkwardly on him; and his knapsack, shako and rifle all looked like some sort of fetter he had been forced to wear for a time and which lay heavily on him."[23] Dostoyevsky's character and interests made him an outsider among his 120 classmates: he showed bravery and a strong sense of justice, protected newcomers, aligned himself with teachers, criticised corruption among officers and helped poor farmers. Although he was solitary and inhabited his own literary world, he was respected by his classmates. His reclusiveness and interest in religion earned him the nickname "Monk Photius".[24][25]
Signs of Dostoyevsky's epilepsy may have first appeared on learning of the death of his father on 16 June 1839,[26] although the reports of a seizure originated from accounts now considered unreliable, which were written by his daughter and later expanded by Sigmund Freud.[27] His father's official cause of death was an apoplectic stroke, but a neighbour, Pavel Khotiaintsev, accused the father's serfs of murder. Had the serfs been found guilty and sent to Siberia, Khotiaintsev would have been in a position to buy the vacated land. The serfs were acquitted in a trial in Tula, but Dostoyevsky's brother Andrei perpetuated the story.[28] After his father's death, Dostoyevsky continued his studies, passed his exams and obtained the rank of engineer cadet, entitling him to live away from the academy. After a short visit to Mikhail in Reval, Dostoyevsky frequently attended concerts, operas, plays and ballets. During this time, two of his friends introduced him to gambling.[29][25]
On 12 August 1843 Dostoyevsky took a job as a lieutenant engineer and lived with Adolph Totleben in an apartment owned by Dr. Rizenkampf, a friend of Mikhail. Rizenkampf characterized him as "no less good-natured and no less courteous than his brother, but when not in a good mood he often looked at everything through dark glasses, became vexed, forgot good manners, and sometimes was carried away to the point of abusiveness and loss of self-awareness".[30] Dostoyevsky's first completed literary work, a translation of Honoré de Balzac's novel Eugénie Grandet, was published in June and July 1843 in the 6th and 7th volume of the journal Repertoire and Pantheon,[31][32] followed by several other translations, though none were successful, and his financial difficulties led him to write a novel.[33][25]
Career
Early career (1844–1849)
Dostoyevsky felt that his military career would endanger his now flourishing literary career, so he wrote a letter on 19 October 1844, asking to resign his post. Shortly thereafter, he wrote his second novel, The Double, which appeared in the journal Notes of the Fatherland on 30 January 1846, before being published in February. Around 1846, Dostoyevsky discovered socialism through the writings of French socialists Fourier, Cabet, Proudhon and Saint-Simon. Through his relationship with Belinsky, he expanded his knowledge of the philosophy of socialism, becoming attracted to its logic, its sense of justice and its preoccupation with the destitute and the disadvantaged. His relationship with Belinsky became increasingly strained as Belinsky's atheism and dislike of religion clashed with Dostoyevsky's Russian Orthodox beliefs. Dostoyevsky eventually parted with him and his associates.[37][38]
After The Double received negative reviews, Dostoyevsky's health declined and he had more frequent seizures, but he continued writing. From 1846 to 1848 he released several short stories in the magazine Annals of the Fatherland, including "Mr. Prokharchin", "The Landlady", "A Weak Heart", and "White Nights". These stories were unsuccessful, leaving Dostoyevsky once more in financial trouble, so he joined the utopian socialist Betekov circle, a tightly knit community which helped him to survive. When the circle dissolved, Dostoyevsky befriended Apollon Maykov and his brother Valerian. In 1846, on the recommendation of the poet Aleksey Pleshcheyev,[39] he joined the socio-Christian Petrashevsky Circle, founded by Mikhail Petrashevsky, who had proposed social reforms in Russia. Mikhail Bakunin once wrote to Alexander Herzen that the group was "the most innocent and harmless company" and its members were "systematic opponents of all revolutionary goals and means".[40] Dostoyevsky used the circle's library on Saturdays and Sundays and occasionally participated in their discussions on freedom from censorship and the abolition of serfdom.[41][42]
In 1849, the first parts of Netochka Nezvanova, a novel Dostoyevsky had been planning since 1846, were published in Annals of the Fatherland, but his banishment ended the project. Dostoyevsky never attempted to complete it.[43]
Siberian exile (1849–1854)
The case was discussed for four months by an investigative commission headed by the Tsar, with Adjutant General Ivan Nabokov, senator Count Pavel Gagarin, Count Vasili Dolgorukov, General Yakov Rostovtsev and General Leonty Dubelt, head of the secret police. They sentenced the members of the circle to death by firing squad, and the prisoners were taken to Semyonov Place in St Petersburg on 23 December 1849 where they were split into three-man groups. Dostoyevsky was the third in the second row; next to him stood Pleshcheyev and Durov. The execution was stayed when a cart delivered a letter from the Tsar commuting the sentence.
Dostoyevsky served four years of exile with hard labour at a katorga prison camp in Omsk, Siberia, followed by a term of compulsory military service. After a fourteen-day sleigh ride, the prisoners reached Tobolsk, a prisoner way station. Despite the circumstances, Dostoyevsky consoled the other prisoners, such as the Petrashevist Ivan Yastrzhembsky, who was surprised by Dostoyevsky's kindness and eventually abandoned his decision to commit suicide. In Tobolsk, the members received food and clothes from the Decembrist women, as well as several copies of the New Testament with a ten-ruble banknote inside each copy. Eleven days later, Dostoyevsky reached Omsk[45][47] together with just one other member of the Petrashevsky Circle, the poet Sergei Durov.[48] Dostoyevsky described his barracks:
In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold. All the floors were rotten. Filth on the floors an inch thick; one could slip and fall ... We were packed like herrings in a barrel ... There was no room to turn around. From dusk to dawn it was impossible not to behave like pigs ... Fleas, lice, and black beetles by the bushel ...Classified as "one of the most dangerous convicts", Dostoyevsky had his feet and hands shackled until his release. He was permitted to read nothing but his New Testament. In addition to his seizures, he had haemorrhoids, lost weight and was "burned by some fever, trembling and feeling too hot or too cold every night". The smell of the privy pervaded the entire building, and the small bathroom had to suffice for more than 200 people. Dostoyevsky was occasionally sent to the military hospital, where he read newspapers and Dickens novels. He was generally respected by the prisoners, but despised by some because of his xenophobic statements.[49][50]
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Pisma, I: pp. 135–7.
Release from prison (1854–1865)
In Semipalatinsk, Dostoyevsky tutored several schoolchildren and came into contact with upper-class families, including that of Lieutenant-Colonel Belikhov, who used to invite him to read passages from newspapers and magazines. During a visit to Belikhov, Dostoyevsky met the family of Alexander Ivanovich Isaev and Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva and fell in love with the latter. Alexander Isaev took a new post in Kuznetsk, where he died in August 1855. Maria then moved with Dostoyevsky to Barnaul. In 1856 Dostoyevsky sent a letter through Wrangel to General Eduard Totleben, apologising for his activity in several utopian circles. As a result, he obtained the right to publish books and to marry, although he remained under police surveillance for the rest of his life. Maria married Dostoyevsky in Semipalatinsk on 7 February 1857, even though she had initially refused his marriage proposal, stating that they were not meant for each other and that his poor financial situation precluded marriage. Their family life was unhappy and she found it difficult to cope with his seizures. Describing their relationship, he wrote: "Because of her strange, suspicious and fantastic character, we were definitely not happy together, but we could not stop loving each other; and the more unhappy we were, the more attached to each other we became". They mostly lived apart.[56] In 1859 he was released from military service because of deteriorating health and was granted permission to return to Russia, first to Tver, where he met his brother for the first time in ten years, and then to St Petersburg.[57][58]
Dostoyevsky travelled to western Europe for the first time on 7 June 1862, visiting Cologne, Berlin, Dresden, Wiesbaden, Belgium and Paris. In London he met Herzen and visited the Crystal Palace. He travelled with Nikolay Strakhov through Switzerland and several North Italian cities, including Turin, Livorno and Florence. He recorded his impressions of those trips in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, in which he criticised capitalism, social modernisation, materialism, Catholicism and Protestantism.[63][64]
From August to October 1863, Dostoyevsky made another trip to western Europe. He met his second love, Polina Suslova, in Paris and lost nearly all his money gambling in Wiesbaden and Baden-Baden. In 1864 his wife Maria and brother Mikhail died, and Dostoyevsky became the lone parent of his stepson Pasha and the sole supporter of his brother's family. The failure of Epoch, the magazine he had founded with Mikhail after the suppression of Vremya, worsened his financial situation, although the continued help of his relatives and friends averted bankruptcy.[65][66]
Marriage and honeymoon (1866–1871)
The first two parts of Crime and Punishment were published in January and February 1866 in the periodical The Russian Messenger,[67] attracting at least 500 new subscribers to the magazine.[68]Dostoyevsky returned to Saint Petersburg in mid-September and promised his editor, Fyodor Stellovsky, that he would complete The Gambler, a short novel focused on gambling addiction, by November, although he had not yet begun writing it. One of Dostoyevsky's friends, Milyukov, advised him to hire a secretary. Dostoyevsky contacted stenographer Pavel Olkhin from Saint Petersburg, who recommended his pupil Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina. Her shorthand helped Dostoyevsky to complete The Gambler on 30 October, after 26 days' work.[69][70] She remarked that Dostoyevsky was of average height but always tried to carry himself erect. "He had light brown, slightly reddish hair, he used some hair conditioner, and he combed his hair in a diligent way ... his eyes, they were different: one was dark brown; in the other, the pupil was so big that you could not see its color, [this was caused by an injury]. The strangeness of his eyes gave Dostoyevsky some mysterious appearance. His face was pale, and it looked unhealthy."[71]
On 15 February 1867 Dostoyevsky married Snitkina in Trinity Cathedral, Saint Petersburg. The 7,000 rubles he had earned from Crime and Punishment did not cover their debts, forcing Anna to sell her valuables. On 14 April 1867 they began a delayed honeymoon in Germany with the money gained from the sale. They stayed in Berlin and visited the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, where he sought inspiration for his writing. They continued their trip through Germany, visiting Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Heidelberg and Karlsruhe and finally staying in Geneva.
Their first child, Sonya, was conceived in Baden-Baden, and was born there on 5 March 1868. The baby died of pneumonia three months later, and Anna recalled how Dostoyevsky "wept and sobbed like a woman in despair".[72] In September 1867, Dostoyevsky began work on The Idiot, and after a prolonged planning process that bore little resemblance to the published novel, he eventually managed to write the first 100 pages in only 23 days; the serialization began in The Russian Messenger in January 1868. The couple moved from Geneva to Vevey and then to Milan, before continuing to Florence. The Idiot was completed there in January 1869, the final part appearing in The Russian Messenger in February 1869.[73][74] Anna gave birth to their second daughter, Lyubov, on 26 September 1869 in Dresden. In April 1871, Dostoyevsky made a final visit to a gambling hall in Wiesbaden. Anna claimed that he stopped gambling after the birth of their second daughter, but this is a subject of debate.[d]
After hearing news that the socialist revolutionary group "People's Vengeance" had murdered one of its own members, Ivan Ivanov, on 21 November 1869, Dostoyevsky began writing Demons.[77] In 1871, Dostoyevsky and Anna travelled by train to Berlin. During the trip he burnt several manuscripts, including those of The Idiot, because he was concerned about potential problems with customs. The family arrived in Saint Petersburg on 8 July, marking the end of a honeymoon (originally planned for three months) that had lasted over four years.[78][79]
Return to Russia (1871–1875)
Dostoyevsky revived his friendships with Maykov and Strakhov and made new acquaintances, including church politician Terty Filipov and the brothers Vsevolod and Vladimir Solovyov. Konstantin Pobedonostsev, future Imperial High Commissioner of the Most Holy Synod, influenced Dostoyevsky's political progression to conservatism. Around early 1872 the family spent several months in Staraya Russa, a town known for its mineral spa. Dostoyevsky's work was delayed when Anna's sister Maria Svatkovskaya died on 1 May 1872, either from typhus or malaria,[82] and Anna developed an abscess on her throat.[80][83]
In March 1874 Dostoyevsky left The Citizen because of the stressful work and interference from the Russian bureaucracy. In his fifteen months with The Citizen, he had been taken to court twice: on 11 June 1873 for citing the words of Prince Meshchersky without permission, and again on 23 March 1874. Dostoyevsky offered to sell The Russian Messenger, a new novel he had not yet begun to write, but the magazine refused. Nikolay Nekrasov suggested that he publish A Writer's Diary in Notes of the Fatherland; he would receive 250 rubles for each printer's sheet – 100 more than the text's publication in The Russian Messenger would have earned. Dostoyevsky accepted. As his health began to decline, he consulted several doctors in St Petersburg and was advised to take a cure outside Russia. Around July, he reached Ems and consulted a physician, who diagnosed him with acute catarrh. During his stay he began The Adolescent. He returned to Saint Petersburg in late July.[86][87]
Anna proposed that they spend the winter in Staraya Russa to allow Dostoyevsky to rest, although doctors had suggested a second visit to Ems because his health had previously improved there. On 10 August 1875 his son Alexey was born in Staraya Russa, and in mid-September the family returned to Saint Petersburg. Dostoyevsky finished The Adolescent at the end of 1875, although passages of it had been serialised in Notes of the Fatherland since January. The Adolescent chronicles the life of Arkady Dolgoruky, the illegitimate child of the landowner Versilov and a peasant mother. It deals primarily with the relationship between father and son, which became a frequent theme in Dostoyevsky's subsequent works.[88][89]
Last years (1876–1881)
In early 1876, Dostoyevsky continued work on his Diary. The book includes numerous essays and a few short stories about society, religion, politics and ethics. The collection sold more than twice as many copies as his previous books. Dostoyevsky received more letters from readers than ever before, and people of all ages and occupations visited him. With assistance from Anna's brother, the family bought a dacha in Staraya Russa. In the summer of 1876, Dostoyevsky began experiencing shortness of breath again. He visited Ems for a third time and was told that he might live for another 15 years if he moved to a healthier climate. When he returned to Russia, Tsar Alexander II ordered Dostoyevsky to visit his palace to present the Diary to him, and he asked him to educate his sons, Sergey and Paul. This visit further increased Dosteyevsky's circle of acquaintances. He was a frequent guest in several salons in Saint Petersburg and met many famous people, including Princess Sophia Tolstaya, Yakov Polonsky, Sergei Witte, Alexey Suvorin, Anton Rubinstein and Ilya Repin.[90][91]Dostoyevsky's health declined further, and in March 1877 he had four epileptic seizures. Rather than returning to Ems, he visited Maly Prikol, a manor near Kursk. While returning to St Petersburg to finalise his Diary, he visited Darovoye, where he had spent much of his childhood. In December he attended Nekrasov's funeral and gave a speech. He was appointed an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, from which he received an honorary certificate in February 1879. He declined an invitation to an international congress on copyright in Paris after his son Alyosha had a severe epileptic seizure and died on 16 May. The family later moved to the apartment where Dostoyevsky had written his first works. Around this time, he was elected to the board of directors of the Slavic Benevolent Society in Saint Petersburg. That summer, he was elected to the honorary committee of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale, whose members included Victor Hugo, Ivan Turgenev, Paul Heyse, Alfred Tennyson, Anthony Trollope, Henry Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Leo Tolstoy. Dostoyevsky made his fourth and final visit to Ems in early August 1879. He was diagnosed with early-stage pulmonary emphysema, which his doctor believed could be successfully managed, but not cured.[92][93]
Among Dostoyevsky's last words was his quotation of Matthew 3:14–15: "But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptised of thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness", and he finished with "Hear now—permit it. Do not restrain me!"[104] When he died, his body was placed on a table, following Russian custom. He was interred in the Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Convent, near his favourite poets, Karamsin and Zhukovsky. It is unclear how many attended his funeral. According to one reporter, more than 100,000 mourners were present, while others describe attendance between 40,000 and 50,000. His tombstone is inscribed with lines from the New Testament:[102][105]
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
— Jesus, from John 12:24
Liaisons
Dostoyevsky had his first known affair with Avdotya Yakovlevna, whom he met in the Panayev circle in the early 1840s. He described her as educated, interested in literature, and a femme fatale.[106] He admitted later that he was uncertain about their relationship.[107] According to Anna Dostoyevskaya's memoirs, Dostoyevsky once asked his sister's sister-in-law, Yelena Ivanova, whether she would marry him, hoping to replace her mortally ill husband after he died, but she rejected his proposal.[108]Dostoyevsky and Polina Suslova had a short but intimate affair, which peaked in the winter of 1862–63. Suslova's dalliance with a Spaniard in late spring and Dostoyevsky's gambling addiction and age ended their relationship. He later described her in a letter to Nadezhda Suslova as a "great egoist. Her egoism and her vanity are colossal. She demands everything of other people, all the perfections, and does not pardon the slightest imperfection in the light of other qualities that one may possess", and later stated "I still love her, but I do not want to love her any more. She doesn't deserve this love ..."[56] In 1858 Dostoyevsky had a romance with comic actress Aleksandra Ivanovna Schubert. Although she divorced Dostoyevsky's friend Stepan Yanovsky, she would not live with him. Dostoyevsky did not love her either, but they were probably good friends. She wrote that he "became very attracted to me".[109][110]
Through a worker in Epoch, Dostoyevsky learned of the Russian-born Martha Brown (née Elizaveta Andreyevna Chlebnikova), who had had affairs with several westerners. Her relationship with Dostoyevsky is known only through letters written between November 1864 and January 1865.[111][112] In 1865, Dostoyevsky met Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya. Their relationship is not verified; Anna Dostoyevskaya spoke of a good affair, but Korvin-Krukovskaya's sister, the mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya, thought that Korvin-Krukovskaya had rejected him.[113]
Beliefs
Political
In his youth, Dostoyevsky enjoyed reading Nikolai Karamzin's History of the Russian State, which praised conservatism and Russian independence, ideas that Dostoyevsky would embrace later in life. Before his arrest for participating in the Petrashevsky Circle in 1849, Dostoyevsky remarked, "As far as I am concerned, nothing was ever more ridiculous than the idea of a republican government in Russia." In an 1881 edition of his Diaries, Dostoyevsky stated that the Tsar and the people should form a unity: "For the people, the tsar is not an external power, not the power of some conqueror ... but a power of all the people, an all-unifying power the people themselves desired."[114]While critical of serfdom, Dostoyevsky was sceptical about the creation of a constitution, a concept he viewed as unrelated to Russia's history. He described it as a mere "gentleman's rule" and believed that "a constitution would simply enslave the people". He advocated social change instead, for example removal of the feudal system and a weakening of the divisions between the peasantry and the affluent classes. His ideal was a utopian, Christianized Russia where "if everyone were actively Christian, not a single social question would come up ... If they were Christians they would settle everything".[115] He thought democracy and oligarchy were poor systems; of France he wrote, "the oligarchs are only concerned with the interest of the wealthy; the democrats, only with the interest of the poor; but the interests of society, the interest of all and the future of France as a whole—no one there bothers about these things."[115] He maintained that political parties ultimately led to social discord. In the 1860s, he discovered Pochvennichestvo, a movement similar to Slavophilism in that it rejected Europe's culture and contemporary philosophical movements, such as nihilism and materialism. Pochvennichestvo differed from Slavophilism in aiming to establish, not an isolated Russia, but a more open state modelled on the Russia of Peter the Great.[115]
In his incomplete article "Socialism and Christianity", Dostoyevsky claimed that civilisation ("the second stage in human history") had become degraded, and that it was moving towards liberalism and losing its faith in God. He asserted that the traditional concept of Christianity should be recovered. He thought that contemporary western Europe had "rejected the single formula for their salvation that came from God and was proclaimed through revelation, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself', and replaced it with practical conclusions such as, 'Chacun pour soi et Dieu pour tous' [Every man for himself and God for all], or scientific slogans like 'the struggle for survival'".[114] He considered this crisis to be the consequence of the collision between communal and individual interests, brought about by a decline in religious and moral principles.
Dostoyevsky distinguished three "enormous world ideas" prevalent in his time: Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Russian Orthodoxy. He claimed that Catholicism had continued the tradition of Imperial Rome and had thus become anti-Christian and proto-socialist, inasmuch as the Church's interest in political and mundane affairs led it to abandon the idea of Christ. For Dostoyevsky, socialism was "the latest incarnation of the Catholic idea" and its "natural ally".[116] He found Protestantism self-contradictory and claimed that it would ultimately lose power and spirituality. He deemed Russian Orthodoxy to be the ideal form of Christianity.
During the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), Dostoyevsky asserted that war might be necessary if salvation were to be granted. He wanted the Muslim Ottoman Empire eliminated and the Christian Byzantine Empire restored, and he hoped for the liberation of Balkan Slavs and their unification with the Russian Empire.[114]
Racial
Dostoyevsky expressed antisemitic sentiments, some of which are found in his Diaries, but he also stood up for the rights of Jews. In a review of Joseph Frank's book The Mantle of the Prophet, Orlando Figes states that A Writer's Diary is "filled with politics, literary criticism, and pan-Slav diatribes about the virtues of the Russian Empire, [and] represents a major challenge to the Dostoyevsky fan, not least on account of its frequent expressions of antisemitism."[117] In his foreword for David I. Goldstein's book Dostoevsky and the Jews, Frank tried to paint Dostoyevsky as a product of his time, noting that Dostoyevsky made antisemitic remarks, but was not entirely comfortable with these views.[118]He supported equal rights for the Russian Jewish population, which was an unpopular position in Russia. He stated that he did not hate Jewish people and was not antisemitic. He claimed that Jews might exert a negative influence, but he advised the Tsar to allow them to occupy influential positions such as university professorships. The antisemitism label does not reflect his expressed desire to reconcile Jews and Christians peacefully in a universal brotherhood of mankind.[119]
Religious
According to an officer at the military academy, Dostoyevsky was profoundly religious, followed Orthodox practice, and regularly read the Gospels and Heinrich Zschokke's Die Stunden der Andacht ("Hours of Devotion"), which "preached a sentimental version of Christianity entirely free from dogmatic content and with a strong emphasis on giving Christian love a social application." This book may have prompted his later interest in Christian socialism.[125] Through the literature of Hoffmann, Balzac, Eugène Sue and Goethe, Dostoyevsky created his own belief system, similar to Russian sectarianism and the Old Belief.[125] After his arrest, aborted execution and subsequent imprisonment, he focused intensely on the figure of Christ and on the New Testament, the only book allowed in prison.[126] In a January 1854 letter to the woman who had sent him the New Testament, Dostoyevsky wrote that he was a "child of unbelief and doubt up to this moment, and I am certain that I shall remain so to the grave." He also wrote that "even if someone were to prove to me that the truth lay outside Christ, I should choose to remain with Christ rather than with the truth."[127]
In Semipalatinsk, Dostoyevsky revived his faith by looking frequently at the stars. Wrangel said that he was "rather pious, but did not often go to church, and disliked priests, especially the Siberian ones. But he spoke about Christ ecstatically." Both planned to translate Hegel's works and Carus' Psyche. Dostoyevsky explored Islam, asking his brother to send him a copy of the Quran. Two pilgrimages and two works by Dmitri Rostovsky, an archbishop who influenced Ukrainian and Russian literature by composing groundbreaking religious plays, strengthened his beliefs.[128] Through his visits to western Europe and discussions with Herzen, Grigoriev, and Strakhov, Dostoyevsky discovered the Pochvennichestvo movement and the theory that the Catholic Church had adopted the principles of rationalism, legalism, materialism, and individualism from ancient Rome and had passed on its philosophy to Protestantism and consequently to atheistic socialism.[129]
Dostoyevsky's fundamental beliefs remain uncertain, since he never fully stated them. In April 1876, in response to a question about a suicide in Diary of a Writer, he remarked that he was a "philosophical deist"—this was a quote from The Adolescent, though he did not say that it was. But his belief in doctrines such as the Trinity—clearly discussed in The Brothers Karamazov, for example[130]—suggests that he may not have fully understood the meaning of this term. Two months later, he wrote in his Diaries that his heroine George Sand "died a déiste, firmly believing in God and in the immortality of the soul," although deists at that time had a range of beliefs about the immortality of the soul.[131][132]
From an analysis of religious perspectives in Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov, James Townsend concludes that Dostoyevsky held orthodox Christian beliefs except for his view of salvation from sin. According to Townsend, "Dostoevsky almost seemed to embrace an in-this-life purgatory," in which people suffer to atone from their sins, in contrast with the Christian doctrine of salvation through Christ.[133] Malcolm V. Jones has found elements of Islam and Buddhism in Dostoyevsky's religious convictions.[134]
Themes and style
Main article: Themes in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's writings
Dostoyevsky's canon includes novels, novellas, novelettes, short stories, essays, pamphlets, limericks, epigrams and poems. He wrote more than 700 letters, a dozen of which are lost.[143]
The main stylistic elements in his works are polyphony, a literary concept developed by M. M. Bakhtin based on his analyses of Dostoyevsky's works. Dostoyevsky also frequently used autobiographical or semi-autobiographical details. His negative characters, such as the Underground Man in Notes from Underground, Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, Ippolit in The Idiot, Kirillov in Demons, and Ivan Karamazov and Smerdiakov in The Brothers Karamazov are products of their times and eventually commit either a crime or suicide.[144][145]
Dostoyevsky's works were often called "philosophical", although he described himself as "weak in philosophy".[146] "Fyodor Mikhailovich loved these questions about the essence of things and the limits of knowledge", wrote Strakhov.[146] Although theologian George Florovsky described Dostoyevsky as a "philosophical problem", because it is unknown whether Dostoyevsky believed in what he wrote, many philosophical ideas are found in books such as A Writer's Diary and The Brothers Karamazov. He may have been critical of rational and logical thinking because he was "more a sage and an artist than a strictly logical, consistent thinker".[147] He represented Kierkegaardian irrationalism in works such as House of the Dead, Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment and Demons. His irrationalism is mentioned in William Barrett's Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy and in Walter Kaufmann's Existentialisms from Dostoevsky to Sartre.[148]
Legacy
Reception and influence
In his posthumous collection of sketches A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway stated that in Dostoyevsky "there were things believable and not to be believed, but some so true that they changed you as you read them; frailty and madness, wickedness and saintliness, and the insanity of gambling were there to know".[155] James Joyce praised Dostoyevsky's prose: "... he is the man more than any other who has created modern prose, and intensified it to its present-day pitch. It was his explosive power which shattered the Victorian novel with its simpering maidens and ordered commonplaces; books which were without imagination or violence."[156] In her essay The Russian Point of View, Virginia Woolf said, "Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading".[157] Franz Kafka called Dostoyevsky his "blood-relative"[158] and was heavily influenced by his works, particularly The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, both of which profoundly influenced The Trial.[159] Sigmund Freud called The Brothers Karamazov "the most significant novel ever written".[160] Modern cultural movements such as the surrealists, the existentialists and the Beats cite Dostoyevsky as an influence,[161] and he is cited as the forerunner of Russian symbolism,[162] existentialism,[163] expressionism[164] and psychoanalysis.[165]
Honours
Numerous memorials were inaugurated in cities and regions such as Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Semipalatinsk, Kusnetsk, Darovoye, Staraya Russa, Lyublino, Tallinn, Dresden, Baden-Baden and Wiesbaden. The Dostoyevskaya metro station in Saint Petersburg was opened on 30 December 1991, and the station of the same name in Moscow was opened on 19 June 2010, the 75th anniversary of the Moscow Metro. The Moscow station is decorated with murals by artist Ivan Nikolaev depicting scenes from Dostoyevsky's works, such as controversial suicides.[170][171]
Criticism
Dostoyevsky's work did not always gain a positive reception. Several critics, such as Nikolay Dobrolyubov, Ivan Bunin and Vladimir Nabokov, viewed his writing as excessively psychological and philosophical rather than artistic. Others found fault with chaotic and disorganised plots, and others, like Turgenev, objected to "excessive psychologising" and too-detailed naturalism. His style was deemed "prolix, repetitious and lacking in polish, balance, restraint and good taste". Saltykov-Shchedrin, Tolstoy, Nikolay Mikhaylovsky and others criticised his puppet-like characters, most prominently in The Idiot, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov. These characters were compared to those of Hoffmann, an author whom Dostoyevsky admired.[172]Basing his estimation on stated criteria of enduring art and individual genius, Nabokov judges Dostoyevsky "not a great writer, but rather a mediocre one—with flashes of excellent humour but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between". Nabokov complains that the novels are peopled by "neurotics and lunatics" and states that Dostoyevsky's characters do not develop: "We get them all complete at the beginning of the tale and so they remain." He finds the novels full of contrived "surprises and complications of plot", which are effective when first read, but on second reading, without the shock and benefit of these surprises, appear loaded with "glorified cliché".[173]
Reputation
Dostoyevsky's works were interpreted in film and on stage in many different countries. Princess Varvara Dmitrevna Obolenskaya was among the first to propose staging Crime and Punishment. Dostoyevsky did not refuse permission, but he advised against it, as he believed that "each art corresponds to a series of poetic thoughts, so that one idea cannot be expressed in another non-corresponding form". His extensive explanations in opposition to the transposition of his works into other media were groundbreaking in fidelity criticism. He thought that just one episode should be dramatised, or an idea should be taken and incorporated into a separate plot.[179] According to critic Alexander Burry, some of the most effective adaptions are Sergei Prokofiev's opera The Gambler, Leoš Janáček's opera From the House of the Dead, Akira Kurosawa's film The Idiot and Andrzej Wajda's film The Possessed.[180]
After the 1917 Russian Revolution, passages of Dostoyevsky books were sometimes shortened, and only two books were censored: Demons[181] and Diary of a Writer.[182] His philosophy, particularly in Demons, was deemed capitalist and anti-Communist.[183] The fact that Dostoyevsky was strictly censored is a myth: the writer was very popular and well received in the Soviet Union, his books have been sold over 34 million 408 thousand times from 1917 to 1981, around 540 thousand copies in a year. According to historian Boris Ilizarov, Stalin read Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov several times.[184]
Works
Dostoyevsky's works of fiction include 15 novels and novellas, 17 short stories, and 5 translations. Many of his longer novels were first published in serialised form in literary magazines and journals. The years given below indicate the year in which the novel's final part or first complete book edition was published. In English many of his novels and stories are known by different titles.Major works
- Poor Folk
Main article: Poor Folk
Poor Folk is an epistolary novel
that describes the relationship between the small, elderly official
Makar Devushkin and the young seamstress Varvara Dobroselova, remote
relatives who write letters to each other. Makar's tender, sentimental
adoration for Varvara and her confident, warm friendship for him explain
their evident preference for a simple life, although it keeps them in
humiliating poverty. An unscrupulous merchant finds the inexperienced
girl and hires her as his housewife and guarantor. He sends her to a
manor somewhere on a steppe, while Makar alleviates his misery and pain
with alcohol.The story focuses on poor people who struggle with their lack of self-esteem. Their misery leads to the loss of their inner freedom, to dependence on the social authorities, and to the extinction of their individuality. Dostoyevsky shows how poverty and dependence are indissolubly aligned with deflection and deformation of self-esteem, combining inward and outerward suffering.[185]
- Notes from Underground
Main article: Notes from Underground
Notes from Underground is split into two stylistically different parts, the first essay-like, the second in narrative style. The protagonist and first-person narrator
is an unnamed 40-year-old civil servant known as The Underground Man.
The only known facts about his situation are that he has quit the
service, lives in a basement flat on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg
and finances his livelihood from a modest inheritance.The first part is a record of his thoughts about society and his character. He describes himself as vicious, squalid and ugly; the chief focuses of his polemic are the "modern human" and his vision of the world, which he attacks severely and cynically, and towards which he develops aggression and vengefulness. He considers his own decline natural and necessary. Although he emphasizes that he does not intend to publish his notes for the public, the narrator appeals repeatedly to an ill-described audience, whose questions he tries to address.
In the second part he describes scenes from his life that are responsible for his failure in personal and professional life and in his love life. He tells of meeting old school friends, who are in secure positions and treat him with condescension. His aggression turns inward on to himself and he tries to humiliate himself further. He presents himself as a possible saviour to the poor prostitute Lisa, advising her to reject self-reproach when she looks to him for hope. Dostoyevsky added a short commentary saying that although the storyline and characters are fictional, such things were inevitable in contemporary society.
The Underground Man was very influential on philosophers. His alienated existence from the mainstream influenced modernist literature.[186][187]
- Crime and Punishment
Main article: Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment describes Rodion Raskolnikov's life, from the murder of a pawnbroker, through spiritual regeneration with the help of Sonya (a "hooker with a heart of gold"), to his sentence in Siberia. Strakhov liked the novel, remarking that "Only Crime and Punishment was read in 1866" and that Dostoyevsky had managed to portray a Russian person aptly and realistically.[188] Otherwise, it received a mixed reception from critics, with most of the negative responses coming from nihilists. Grigory Eliseev of the radical magazine The Contemporary
called the novel a "fantasy according to which the entire student body
is accused without exception of attempting murder and robbery".[189]- The Idiot
Main article: The Idiot
The novel's protagonist, the 26-year-old Prince Myshkin,
returns to Russia after several years at a Swiss sanatorium. Scorned by
Saint Petersburg society for his trusting nature and naivety, he finds
himself at the center of a struggle between a beautiful kept woman,
(Nastasya), and a virtuous and pretty young girl, (Aglaja), both of whom
win his affection. Unfortunately, Myshkin's goodness precipitates
disaster, leaving the impression that, in a world obsessed with money,
power and sexual conquest, a sanatorium may be the only place for a
saint. Myshkin is the personification of a "relatively beautiful man",
namely Christ. Coming "from above" (the Swiss mountains), he physically
resembles common depictions of Jesus Christ: slightly larger than
average, with thick, blond hair, sunken cheeks and a thin, almost
entirely white goatee. Like Christ, Myshkin is a teacher, confessor and
mysterious outsider. Passions such as greed and jealousy are alien to
him. In contrast to those around him, he puts no value on money and
power. He feels compassion without hate, love or ferocity. His
relationship with the immoral Nastasya is obviously inspired by Christ's
relationship with Mary Magdalene. He is called "Idiot" because of such differences.[78][190]- Demons
Main article: The Possessed (novel)
The story of Demons is based largely on the murder of Ivan Ivanov by "People's Vengeance" members in 1869. It was influenced by the Book of Revelation. The secondary characters, Stepan and Pyotr Verkhovensky, are based on Nechayev and Timofey Granovsky respectively.[191]
The novel takes place in a provincial Russian setting, primarily on the
estates of Stepan Verkhovensky and Varvara Stavrogina. Stepan's son
Pyotr is an aspiring revolutionary conspirator who attempts to organize
revolutionaries in the area. He considers Varvara's son Nikolai central
to his plot, because he thinks that Nikolai lacks sympathy for mankind.
Pyotr gathers conspirators such as the philosophizing Shigalyov, the
suicidal Kirillov and the former military man Virginsky. He schemes to
consolidate their loyalty to him and each other by murdering Ivan
Shatov, a fellow conspirator. Pyotr plans to have Kirillov, who is
committed to killing himself, take credit for the murder in his suicide
note. Kirillov complies and Pyotr murders Shatov, but his scheme goes
awry. Pyotr escapes, but the remainder of his aspiring revolutionary
crew is arrested. In the denouement, Nikolai kills himself, tortured by
his own misdeeds.- The Brothers Karamazov
Main article: The Brothers Karamazov
At nearly 800 pages, The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoyevsky's largest work. It received both critical and popular acclaim and is often cited as his magnum opus.[192] Composed of 12 "books", the novel tells the story of the novice Alyosha Karamazov,
the non-believer Ivan Karamazov and the soldier Dmitri Karamazov. The
first books introduce the Karamazovs. The main plot is the death of
their father Fyodor, while other parts are philosophical and religious
arguments by Father Zosima to Alyosha.[193][194]The most famous chapter is "The Grand Inquisitor", a parable told by Ivan to Alyosha about Christ's Second Coming in Seville, Spain, in which Christ is imprisoned by a ninety-year-old Catholic Grand Inquisitor. Instead of answering him, Christ gives him a kiss, and the Inquisitor subsequently releases him, telling him not to return. The tale was misunderstood as a defence of the Inquisitor, but some, such as Romano Guardini, have argued that the Christ of the parable was Ivan's own interpretation of Christ, "the idealistic product of the unbelief". Ivan, however, has stated that he is against Christ. Most contemporary critics and scholars agree that Dostoyevsky is attacking Roman Catholicism and socialist atheism, both represented by the Inquisitor. He warns the readers against a terrible revelation in the future, referring to the Donation of Pepin around 750 and the Spanish Inquisition in the 16th century, which in his view corrupted true Christianity.[195][193][194]
Bibliography
Main article: Fyodor Dostoyevsky bibliography
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- Essay collections
- Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863)
- A Writer's Diary (1873–1881)
- Translations
- (1843) Eugénie Grandet (Honoré de Balzac)
- (1843) La dernière Aldini (George Sand)
- (1843) Mary Stuart (Friedrich Schiller)
- (1843) Boris Godunov (Alexander Pushkin)
- Posthumously Published Notebooks
- (1922) Stavrogin's Confession & the Plan of the Life of a Great Sinner - English translation by Virginia Woolf and S. S. Koteliansky
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