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Fyodor Dostoevsky

August 19, 2023

"Dostoevsky" redirects here. For the surname, see Dostoevsky (surname).
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming conventions, the patronymic is Mikhailovich and the family name is Dostoevsky.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky[a] (UK: /ˌdɒstɔɪˈɛfski/,[1] US: /ˌdɒstəˈjɛfski, ˌdʌs-/;[2] Russian: pre-1918: Ѳедоръ Михайловичъ Достоевскій; post-1918: Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский[b], tr. Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, IPA: [ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj] (listen); 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881[3][c]), sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.[4]

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Portrait of Fyodor Dostoyevsky by Vasily Perov c. 1872
Native name
Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский
BornFyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
(1821-11-11)11 November 1821
Moscow, Russian Empire
Died9 February 1881(1881-02-09) (aged 59)
Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Resting placeTikhvin Cemetery, Saint Petersburg
Occupation
LanguageRussian
EducationNikolayev Military Engineering Institute
PeriodModern (19th century)
Genres
Subjectslist
Literary movementRealism, naturalism
Years active1844–1880
Notable works
Spouse
Maria Dmitriyevna Isaeva
​
​
(m. 1857; died 1864)​
​
​
(m. 1867)​
Children4, including Lyubov Dostoevskaya
Signature

Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature.[5]

Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoevsky 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 Saint Petersburg's literary circles. However, he was arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group, the Petrashevsky Circle, that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia. Dostoevsky was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted at the last moment. He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoevsky 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.

Dostoevsky's body of work consists of thirteen novels, three novellas, seventeen short stories, and numerous other works. His writings were widely read both within and beyond his native Russia and influenced an equally great number of later writers including Russians such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov, philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre, and the emergence of Existentialism and Freudianism.[6] His books have been translated into more than 170 languages, and served as the inspiration for many films.

Ancestry

Parents
 
Maria Fyodorovna Dostoevskaya
 
Mikhail Andreyevich Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky's paternal ancestors were part of a noble family of Russian Orthodox Christians. The family traced its roots back to Danilo Irtishch, who was granted lands in the Pinsk region (for centuries part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, now in modern-day Belarus) in 1509 for his services under a local prince, his progeny then taking the name "Dostoevsky" based on a village there called Dostoïevo (derived from Old Polish dostojnik – dignitary).[7]

Dostoevsky's immediate ancestors on his mother's side were merchants; the male line on his father's side were priests.[8][9]

In 1809, the 20-year-old Mikhail Dostoevsky 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 a senior physician. In 1819 he married Maria Nechayeva. The following year, he took up a post at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor. In 1828, when his two sons, Mikhail and Fyodor, were eight and seven respectively, 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.[10] Dostoevsky's parents subsequently had six more children: Varvara (1822–1892), Andrei (1825–1897), Lyubov (born and died 1829), Vera (1829–1896), Nikolai (1831–1883) and Aleksandra (1835–1889).[11][8][9]

Childhood (1821–1836)

Fyodor Dostoevsky, born on 11 November [O.S. 30 October] 1821 in Moscow, was the second child of Dr. Mikhail Dostoevsky and Maria Dostoevskaya (born 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.[12] Dostoevsky encountered the patients, who were at the lower end of the Russian social scale, when playing in the hospital gardens.[13]

Dostoevsky 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 upbringing and his love for fictional stories.[14] 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 the works from writer Ann Radcliffe; romantic works by Schiller and Goethe; heroic tales by Miguel de Cervantes and Walter Scott; and Homer's epics.[15][16] Dostoevsky was greatly influenced by the work of Nikolai Gogol.[17] Although his father's approach to education has been described as strict and harsh,[18] Dostoevsky himself reported that his imagination was brought alive by nightly readings by his parents.[13]

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 theme of the desire of a mature man for a young girl appears in The Devils, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, and other writings.[19] An incident involving a family servant, or serf, in the estate in Darovoye, is described in "The Peasant Marey": when the young Dostoevsky imagines hearing a wolf in the forest, Marey, who is working nearby, comforts him.[20]

Although Dostoevsky had a delicate physical constitution, his parents described him as hot-headed, stubborn, and cheeky.[21] In 1833, Dostoevsky's father, who was profoundly religious, sent him to a French boarding school and then to the Chermak boarding school. He was described as a pale, introverted dreamer and an over-excitable romantic.[22] To pay the school fees, his father borrowed money and extended his private medical practice. Dostoevsky felt out of place among his aristocratic classmates at the Moscow school, and the experience was later reflected in some of his works, notably The Adolescent.[23][16]

Youth (1836–1843)

 
Dostoevsky as a military engineer

On 27 September 1837, Dostoevsky's mother died of tuberculosis. The previous May, his parents had sent Dostoevsky and his brother Mikhail to Saint Petersburg to attend the free Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute, forcing the brothers to abandon their academic studies for military careers. Dostoevsky entered the academy in January 1838, but only with the help of family members. Mikhail was refused admission on health grounds and was sent to an academy in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia).[24][25]

Dostoevsky 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. Dostoevsky. 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."[26] Dostoevsky'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".[27][28]

Signs of Dostoevsky's epilepsy may have first appeared on learning of the death of his father on 16 June 1839,[29] although the reports of a seizure originated from accounts written by his daughter (later expanded by Sigmund Freud[30]) which are now considered to be unreliable. 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 Dostoevsky's brother Andrei perpetuated the story.[31] After his father's death, Dostoevsky continued his studies, passed his exams and obtained the rank of engineer cadet, entitling him to live away from the academy. He visited Mikhail in Reval (Tallinn) and frequently attended concerts, operas, plays and ballets. During this time, two of his friends introduced him to gambling.[32][28]

On 12 August 1843 Dostoevsky took a job as a lieutenant engineer and lived with Adolph Totleben in an apartment owned by Dr. Rizenkampf, a friend of Mikhail. Rizenkampf characterised 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".[33] Dostoevsky'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 volumes of the journal Repertoire and Pantheon,[34][35] followed by several other translations. None were successful, and his financial difficulties led him to write a novel.[36][28]

Career

Early career (1844–1849)

 
Dostoevsky, 1847

Dostoevsky completed his first novel, Poor Folk, in May 1845. His friend Dmitry Grigorovich, with whom he was sharing an apartment at the time, took the manuscript to the poet Nikolay Nekrasov, who in turn showed it to the renowned and influential literary critic Vissarion Belinsky. Belinsky described it as Russia's first "social novel".[37] Poor Folk was released on 15 January 1846 in the St Petersburg Collection almanac and became a commercial success.[38][39]

Dostoevsky felt that his military career would endanger his now flourishing literary career, so he wrote a letter 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 the same time, Dostoevsky discovered socialism through the writings of French thinkers Fourier, Cabet, Proudhon and Saint-Simon. Through his relationship with Belinsky he expanded his knowledge of the philosophy of socialism. He was attracted to its logic, its sense of justice and its preoccupation with the destitute and the disadvantaged. However, his Russian Orthodox faith and religious sensibilities could not accord with Belinsky's admixture of atheism, utilitarianism and scientific materialism, leading to increasing friction between them. Dostoevsky eventually parted with him and his associates.[40][41]

After The Double received negative reviews (including a particularly scathing one from Belinsky) Dostoevsky's health declined and his seizures became more frequent, but he continued writing. From 1846 to 1848 he published several short stories in the magazine Notes of the Fatherland, including "Mr. Prokharchin", "The Landlady", "A Weak Heart", and "White Nights". The negative reception of these stories, combined with his health problems and Belinsky's attacks, caused him distress and financial difficulty, but this was greatly alleviated when he joined the utopian socialist Beketov circle, a tightly knit community which helped him to survive. When the circle dissolved, Dostoevsky befriended Apollon Maykov and his brother Valerian. In 1846, on the recommendation of the poet Aleksey Pleshcheyev,[42] he joined the 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".[43] Dostoevsky used the circle's library on Saturdays and Sundays and occasionally participated in their discussions on freedom from censorship and the abolition of serfdom.[44][45] Bakunin's description, however, was not true of the aristocrat Nikolay Speshnev, who joined the circle in 1848 and set about creating a secret revolutionary society from amongst its members. Dostoevsky himself became a member of this society, was aware of its conspiratorial aims, and actively participated, although he harboured significant doubts about their actions and intentions.[46]

In 1849, the first parts of Netochka Nezvanova, a novel Dostoevsky had been planning since 1846, were published in Notes of the Fatherland, but his banishment ended the project. Dostoevsky never attempted to complete it.[47]

Siberian exile (1849–1854)

 
A sketch of the Petrashevsky Circle mock execution

The members of the Petrashevsky Circle were denounced to Liprandi, an official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Dostoevsky was accused of reading works by Belinsky, including the banned Letter to Gogol,[48] and of circulating copies of these and other works. Antonelli, the government agent who had reported the group, wrote in his statement that at least one of the papers criticised Russian politics and religion. Dostoevsky responded to these charges by declaring that he had read the essays only "as a literary monument, neither more nor less"; he spoke of "personality and human egoism" rather than of politics. Even so, he and his fellow "conspirators" were arrested on 23 April 1849 at the request of Count A. Orlov and Tsar Nicholas I, who feared a revolution like the Decembrist revolt of 1825 in Russia and the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe. The members were held in the well-defended Peter and Paul Fortress, which housed the most dangerous convicts.[49][50][51]

The case was discussed for four months by an investigative commission headed by the Tsar, with Adjutant General Ivan Nabokov, senator Prince Pavel Gagarin, Prince 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 Saint Petersburg on 23 December 1849. They were split into three-man groups and the first group was taken in front of the firing squad. Dostoevsky 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. Dostoevsky later described the experience of what he believed to be the last moments of his life in his novel The Idiot. The story of a young man sentenced to death by firing squad but reprieved at the last moment is recounted by the main character, Prince Myshkin, who describes the experience from the point of view of the victim, and considers the philosophical and spiritual implications.

Dostoevsky 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, Dostoevsky consoled the other prisoners, such as the Petrashevist Ivan Yastrzhembsky, who was surprised by Dostoevsky's kindness and eventually abandoned his decision to kill himself. 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, Dostoevsky reached Omsk[50][52] together with just one other member of the Petrashevsky Circle, the writer Sergei Durov.[53] Dostoevsky 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 ...[54]

Classified as "one of the most dangerous convicts", Dostoevsky had his hands and feet shackled until his release. He was only permitted to read his New Testament Bible. 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. Dostoevsky was occasionally sent to the military hospital, where he read newspapers and Dickens novels. He was respected by most of the other prisoners, but despised by some Polish political prisoners because of his Russian nationalism and anti-Polish sentiments.[55]

Release from prison and first marriage (1854–1866)

After his release on 14 February 1854, Dostoevsky asked Mikhail to help him financially and to send him books by Vico, Guizot, Ranke, Hegel and Kant.[56] The House of the Dead, based on his experience in prison, was published in 1861 in the journal Vremya ("Time") – it was the first published novel about Russian prisons.[57] Before moving in mid-March to Semipalatinsk, where he was forced to serve in the Siberian Army Corps of the Seventh Line Battalion, Dostoevsky met geographer Pyotr Semyonov and ethnographer Shokan Walikhanuli. Around November 1854, he met Baron Alexander Egorovich Wrangel, an admirer of his books, who had attended the aborted execution. They both rented houses in the Cossack Garden outside Semipalatinsk. Wrangel remarked that Dostoevsky "looked morose. His sickly, pale face was covered with freckles, and his blond hair was cut short. He was a little over average height and looked at me intensely with his sharp, grey-blue eyes. It was as if he were trying to look into my soul and discover what kind of man I was."[58][59][60]

In Semipalatinsk, Dostoevsky 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, Dostoevsky 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 and her son then moved with Dostoevsky to Barnaul. In 1856, Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky 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.[61] In 1859 he was released from military service because of deteriorating health and was granted permission to return to European Russia, first to Tver, where he met his brother for the first time in ten years, and then to St Petersburg.[62][63]

 
Dostoevsky in Paris, 1863

The short story "A Little Hero" (Dostoevsky's only work completed in prison) appeared in a journal, but "Uncle's Dream" and "The Village of Stepanchikovo" were not published until 1860. Notes from the House of the Dead was released in Russky Mir (Russian World) in September 1860. Humiliated and Insulted was published in the new Vremya magazine,[d] which had been created with the help of funds from his brother's cigarette factory.[65][66][67]

Dostoevsky 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 the essay "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions", in which he also criticised capitalism, social modernisation, materialism, Catholicism and Protestantism.[68][69]

From August to October 1863, Dostoevsky 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 his brother Mikhail died, and Dostoevsky 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.[70][71]

Second 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,[72] attracting at least 500 new subscribers to the magazine.[73]

Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky's friends, Milyukov, advised him to hire a secretary. Dostoevsky contacted stenographer Pavel Olkhin from Saint Petersburg, who recommended his pupil, the twenty-year-old Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina. Her shorthand helped Dostoevsky to complete The Gambler on 30 October, after 26 days' work.[74][75] She remarked that Dostoevsky 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."[76]

 
Memorial plaque to Dostoevsky in Baden-Baden

On 15 February 1867 Dostoevsky 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 in Dresden, where he sought inspiration for his writing. They continued their trip through Germany, visiting Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Heidelberg and Karlsruhe. They spent five weeks in Baden-Baden, where Dostoevsky had a quarrel with Turgenev and again lost much money at the roulette table.[77] At one point, his wife was reportedly forced to pawn her underwear.[78] The couple travelled on to Geneva.[79]

In September 1867, Dostoevsky 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 serialisation began in The Russian Messenger in January 1868.

 
Plaque for baby Sofya

Their first child, Sofya, had been conceived in Baden-Baden, and was born in Geneva on 5 March 1868. The baby died of pneumonia three months later, and Anna recalled how Dostoevsky "wept and sobbed like a woman in despair".[80] Sofya was buried at the Cimetière des Rois (Cemetery of Kings), which is considered the Genevan Panthéon. The grave was later dissolved but in 1986 the International Dostoevsky Society donated a commemorative plaque.[81]

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.[82][83] Anna gave birth to their second daughter, Lyubov, on 26 September 1869 in Dresden. In April 1871, Dostoevsky 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.[e]

After hearing news that the socialist revolutionary group "People's Vengeance" had murdered one of its own members, Ivan Ivanov, on 21 November 1869, Dostoevsky began writing Demons.[86] In 1871, Dostoevsky 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.[87][88]

Back in Russia (1871–1875)

 
Dostoevsky (left) in the Haymarket, 21/22 March 1874

Back in Russia in July 1871, the family was again in financial trouble and had to sell their remaining possessions. Their son Fyodor was born on 16 July, and they moved to an apartment near the Institute of Technology soon after. They hoped to cancel their large debts by selling their rental house in Peski, but difficulties with the tenant resulted in a relatively low selling price, and disputes with their creditors continued. Anna proposed that they raise money on her husband's copyrights and negotiate with the creditors to pay off their debts in installments.[89][90]

Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky's political progression to conservatism. Around early 1872 the family spent several months in Staraya Russa, a town known for its mineral spa. Dostoevsky's work was delayed when Anna's sister Maria Svatkovskaya died on 1 May 1872, from either typhus or malaria,[91] and Anna developed an abscess on her throat.[89][92]

The family returned to St Petersburg in September. Demons was finished on 26 November and released in January 1873 by the "Dostoevsky Publishing Company", which was founded by Dostoevsky and his wife. Although they accepted only cash payments and the bookshop was in their own apartment, the business was successful, and they sold around 3,000 copies of Demons. Anna managed the finances. Dostoevsky proposed that they establish a new periodical, which would be called A Writer's Diary and would include a collection of essays, but funds were lacking, and the Diary was published in Vladimir Meshchersky's The Citizen, beginning on 1 January, in return for a salary of 3,000 rubles per year. In the summer of 1873, Anna returned to Staraya Russa with the children, while Dostoevsky stayed in St Petersburg to continue with his Diary.[93][94]

In March 1874, Dostoevsky 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. Dostoevsky offered to sell a new novel he had not yet begun to write to The Russian Messenger, 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. Dostoevsky 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.[95][96]

Anna proposed that they spend the winter in Staraya Russa to allow Dostoevsky 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. Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky's subsequent works.[97][98]

Last years (1876–1881)

 
Dostoevsky, 1879

In early 1876, Dostoevsky 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. Dostoevsky 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, Dostoevsky began experiencing shortness of breath again. He visited Ems for the 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 Dostoevsky 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 Countess Sophia Tolstaya, Yakov Polonsky, Sergei Witte, Alexey Suvorin, Anton Rubinstein and Ilya Repin.[99][100]

Dostoevsky'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 Dostoevsky 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. Dostoevsky 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.[101][102]

 
Dostoevsky's funeral

On 3 February 1880 Dostoevsky was elected vice-president of the Slavic Benevolent Society, and he was invited to speak at the unveiling of the Pushkin memorial in Moscow. On 8 June he delivered his speech, giving an impressive performance that had a significant emotional impact on his audience. His speech was met with thunderous applause, and even his long-time rival Turgenev embraced him. Konstantin Staniukovich praised the speech in his essay "The Pushkin Anniversary and Dostoevsky's Speech" in The Business, writing that "the language of Dostoevsky's [Pushkin Speech] really looks like a sermon. He speaks with the tone of a prophet. He makes a sermon like a pastor; it is very deep, sincere, and we understand that he wants to impress the emotions of his listeners."[103] The speech was criticised later by liberal political scientist Alexander Gradovsky, who thought that Dostoevsky idolised "the people",[104] and by conservative thinker Konstantin Leontiev, who, in his essay "On Universal Love", compared the speech to French utopian socialism.[105] The attacks led to a further deterioration in his health.[106][107]

Death

 
Dostoevsky on his bier, drawing by Ivan Kramskoi, 1881
 
Dostoevsky's grave in Saint Petersburg

On 6 February [O.S. 25 January] 1881, while searching for members of the terrorist organisation Narodnaya Volya ("The People's Will") who would soon assassinate Tsar Alexander II, the Tsar's secret police executed a search warrant in the apartment of one of Dostoevsky's neighbours.[citation needed] On the following day, Dostoevsky suffered a pulmonary haemorrhage. Anna denied that the search had caused it, saying that the haemorrhage had occurred after her husband had been looking for a dropped pen holder.[f] After another haemorrhage, Anna called the doctors, who gave a poor prognosis. A third haemorrhage followed shortly afterwards.[111][112] While seeing his children before dying, Dostoevsky requested that the parable of the Prodigal Son be read to his children. The profound meaning of this request is pointed out by Frank:

It was this parable of transgression, repentance, and forgiveness that he wished to leave as a last heritage to his children, and it may well be seen as his own ultimate understanding of the meaning of his life and the message of his work.[113]

 

Among Dostoevsky's last words was his quotation of Matthew 3:14–15: "But John forbad him, saying, I have a 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!".[114] His last words to his wife Anna were: "Remember, Anya, I have always loved you passionately and have never been unfaithful to you ever, even in my thoughts!"[115] 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,[116] near his favourite poets, Nikolay Karamzin and Vasily 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:[111][117]

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it dies, it bringeth forth much fruit.

— John 12:24

Personal life

Extramarital affairs

Dostoevsky 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.[118] He admitted later that he was uncertain about their relationship.[119] According to Anna Dostoevskaya's memoirs, Dostoevsky 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.[120]

Dostoevsky and Apollonia (Polina) Suslova had a short but intimate affair, which peaked in the winter of 1862–1863. Suslova's dalliance with a Spaniard in late spring and Dostoevsky'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 ..."[61] In 1858 Dostoevsky had a romance with comic actress Aleksandra Ivanovna Schubert. Although she divorced Dostoevsky's friend Stepan Yanovsky, she would not live with him. Dostoevsky did not love her either, but they were probably good friends. She wrote that he "became very attracted to me".[121][122]

Through a worker in Epoch, Dostoevsky learned of the Russian-born Martha Brown (née Elizaveta Andreyevna Chlebnikova), who had had affairs with several westerners. Her relationship with Dostoevsky is known only through letters written between November 1864 and January 1865.[123][124] In 1865, Dostoevsky met Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya. Their relationship is not verified; Anna Dostoevskaya spoke of a good affair, but Korvin-Krukovskaya's sister, the mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya, thought that Korvin-Krukovskaya had rejected him.[125]

Political beliefs

In his youth, Dostoevsky enjoyed reading Nikolai Karamzin's History of the Russian State, which praised conservatism and Russian independence, ideas that Dostoevsky would embrace later in life. Before his arrest for participating in the Petrashevsky Circle in 1849, Dostoevsky 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, Dostoevsky 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."[126]

While critical of serfdom, Dostoevsky was skeptical 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".[127] 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."[127] 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.[127]

In his incomplete article "Socialism and Christianity", Dostoevsky 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.'"[126] 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.

Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky, socialism was "the latest incarnation of the Catholic idea" and its "natural ally".[128] 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.

For all that, to place Dostoevsky politically is not that simple, but: as a Christian, he rejected atheistic socialism; as a traditionalist, he rejected the destruction of the institutions; and, as a pacifist, he rejected any violent method or upheaval led by either progressives or reactionaries. He supported private property and business rights, and did not agree with many criticisms of the free market from the socialist utopians of his time.[129][130]

During the Russo-Turkish War, Dostoevsky 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.[126]

Ethnic beliefs

Many characters in Dostoevsky's works, including Jews, have been described as displaying negative stereotypes.[131] In an 1877 letter to Arkady Kovner, a Jew who had accused Dostoevsky of antisemitism, he replied with the following:

"I am not an enemy of the Jews at all and never have been. But as you say, its 40-century existence proves that this tribe has exceptional vitality, which would not help, during the course of its history, taking the form of various Status in Statu ... how can they fail to find themselves, even if only partially, at variance with the indigenous population – the Russian tribe?"[132]

Dostoevsky held to a Pan Slavic ideology that was conditioned by the Ottoman occupations of Eastern Europe. In 1876, the Slavic populations of Serbia and Bulgaria rose up against their Ottoman overlords, but the rebellion was put down. In the process, an estimated 12,000 people were killed. In his diaries, he scorned Westerners and those who were against the Pan Slavic movement. This ideology was motivated in part by the desire to promote a common Orthodox Christian heritage, which he saw as both unifying as well as a force for liberation.[133]

Religious beliefs

 
The New Testament that Dostoevsky took with him to prison in Siberia

Dostoevsky was an Orthodox Christian[134] who was raised in a religious family and knew the Gospel from a very young age.[135] He was influenced by the Russian translation of Johannes Hübner's One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories from the Old and New Testaments Selected for Children (partly a German bible for children and partly a catechism).[136][135][137] He attended Sunday liturgies from an early age and took part in annual pilgrimages to the St. Sergius Trinity Monastery.[138] A deacon at the hospital gave him religious instruction.[137] Among his most cherished childhood memories were reciting prayers in front of guests and reading passages from the Book of Job that impressed him while "still almost a child."[139]

According to an officer at the military academy, Dostoevsky 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.[140] Through the literature of Hoffmann, Balzac, Eugène Sue, and Goethe, Dostoevsky created his own belief system, similar to Russian sectarianism and the Old Belief.[140] 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.[141] In a January 1854 letter to the woman who had sent him the New Testament, Dostoevsky 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."[142]

In Semipalatinsk, Dostoevsky 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." Two pilgrimages and two works by Dmitri Rostovsky, an archbishop who influenced Ukrainian and Russian literature by composing groundbreaking religious plays, strengthened his beliefs.[143] Through his visits to western Europe and discussions with Herzen, Grigoriev, and Strakhov, Dostoevsky 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.[144]

Themes and style

Main article: Themes in Fyodor Dostoevsky's writings
 
Manuscript of Demons

Dostoevsky'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.[145]

Dostoevsky expressed religious, psychological, and philosophical ideas in his writings. His works explore such themes as suicide, poverty, human manipulation, and morality. Psychological themes include dreaming, first seen in "White Nights",[146] and the father-son relationship, beginning in The Adolescent.[147] Most of his works demonstrate a vision of the chaotic sociopolitical structure of contemporary Russia.[148] His early works viewed society (for example, the differences between poor and rich) through the lens of literary realism and naturalism. The influences of other writers, particularly evident in his early works, led to accusations of plagiarism,[149][150] but his style gradually became more individual. After his release from prison, Dostoevsky incorporated religious themes, especially those of Russian Orthodoxy, into his writing. Elements of gothic fiction,[151] romanticism,[152] and satire[153] are observable in some of his books. He frequently used autobiographical or semi-autobiographical details.

An important stylistic element in Dostoevsky's writing is polyphony, the simultaneous presence of multiple narrative voices and perspectives.[154] Kornelije Kvas wrote that Bakhtin's theory of "the polyphonic novel and Dostoevsky’s dialogicness of narration postulates the non-existence of the 'final' word, which is why the thoughts, emotions and experiences of the world of the narrator and his/her characters are reflected through the words of another, with which they can never fully blend."[155]

Legacy

Reception and influence

 
Dostoevsky monument in Dresden (Germany)

Dostoevsky is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential novelists of the Golden Age of Russian literature.[156] Leo Tolstoy admired some of Dostoevsky's works, particularly The House of the Dead, which he saw as exalted religious art, inspired by deep faith and love of humanity.[157][158] Albert Einstein called Dostoevsky a "great religious writer" who explores "the mystery of spiritual existence".[159] Sigmund Freud ranked Dostoevsky second only to Shakespeare as a creative writer,[160] and called The Brothers Karamazov "the most magnificent novel ever written".[161] Friedrich Nietzsche called Dostoevsky "the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn" and described him as being "among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life."[162][163] The Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin's analysis of Dostoevsky came to be at the foundation of his theory of the novel. Bakhtin argued that Dostoevsky's use of Polyphony was a major advancement in the development of the novel as a genre.[154]

In his posthumous collection of sketches A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway stated that in Dostoevsky "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".[164] James Joyce praised Dostoevsky'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."[165] In her essay The Russian Point of View, Virginia Woolf said, "Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading".[166] Franz Kafka called Dostoevsky his "blood-relative"[167] and was heavily influenced by his works, particularly The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, both of which profoundly influenced The Trial.[168] Hermann Hesse enjoyed Dostoevsky's work and said that to read him is like a "glimpse into the havoc".[169] The Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun wrote that "no one has analyzed the complicated human structure as Dostoyevsky. His psychologic sense is overwhelming and visionary."[170] In her essay What Is Romanticism?, Russian-American author Ayn Rand wrote that Dostoevsky was one of the two greatest novelists (the other being Victor Hugo).[171] Writers associated with cultural movements such as surrealism, existentialism and the Beats cite Dostoevsky as an influence,[172] and he is regarded as a forerunner to Russian symbolism,[173] expressionism[174] and psychoanalysis.[175]

J.M. Coetzee featured Dostoevsky as the protagonist in his 1997 novel The Master of Petersburg. The famous Malayalam novel Oru Sankeerthanam Pole by Perumbadavam Sreedharan deals with the life of Dostoevsky and his love affair with Anna.[176]

Honours

 
Soviet Union stamp, 1971

In 1956 an olive-green postage stamp dedicated to Dostoevsky was released in the Soviet Union, with a print run of 1,000 copies.[177] A Dostoevsky Museum was opened on 12 November 1971 in the apartment where he wrote his first and final novels.[178] A crater on Mercury was named after him in 1979, and a minor planet discovered in 1981 by Lyudmila Karachkina was named 3453 Dostoevsky. Music critic and broadcaster Artemy Troitsky has hosted the radio show "FM Достоевский" (FM Dostoevsky) since 1997.[179] Viewers of the TV show Name of Russia voted him the ninth greatest Russian of all time, just after Dmitry Mendeleev, and just ahead of ruler Ivan IV.[180] An Eagle Award-winning TV series directed by Vladimir Khotinenko about Dostoevsky's life was screened in 2011.

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 Dostoevsky's works, such as controversial suicides.[181][182]

In 2021, Kazakhstan celebrated the 200th anniversary of Dostoyevsky's birth.[183]

Criticism

Dostoevsky's work did not always gain a positive reception. Some 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, Nikolay Mikhaylovsky and others criticised his puppet-like characters, most prominently in The Idiot, Demons (The Possessed, The Devils)[184] and The Brothers Karamazov. These characters were compared to those of Hoffmann, an author whom Dostoevsky admired.[185]

Basing his estimation on stated criteria of enduring art and individual genius, Nabokov judges Dostoevsky "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 Dostoevsky'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".[186] The Scottish poet and critic Edwin Muir, however, addressed this criticism, noting that "regarding the 'oddness' of Dostoevsky's characters, it has been pointed out that they perhaps only seem 'pathological', whereas in reality they are 'only visualized more clearly than any figures in imaginative literature'.[187]

Reputation

Dostoevsky's books have been translated into more than 170 languages.[188] The German translator Wilhelm Wolfsohn published one of the first translations, parts of Poor Folk, in an 1846–1847 magazine,[189] and a French translation followed. French, German and Italian translations usually came directly from the original, while English translations were second-hand and of poor quality.[190] The first English translations were by Marie von Thilo in 1881, but the first highly regarded ones were produced between 1912 and 1920 by Constance Garnett.[191] Her flowing and easy translations helped popularise Dostoevsky's novels in anglophone countries, and Bakhtin's Problems of Dostoevsky's Creative Art (1929) (republished and revised as Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics in 1963) provided further understanding of his style.[192]

Dostoevsky'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. Dostoevsky 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.[193] 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.[194]

After the 1917 Russian Revolution, passages of Dostoevsky books were sometimes shortened, although only two books were censored: Demons[195] and Diary of a Writer.[196] His philosophy, particularly in Demons, was deemed anti-capitalist but also anti-Communist and reactionary.[197][198] According to historian Boris Ilizarov, Stalin read Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov several times.[199]

Works

Dostoevsky's works of fiction include 16 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 depicts 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. Dostoevsky shows how poverty and dependence are indissolubly aligned with deflection and deformation of self-esteem, combining inward and outward suffering.[200]

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 emphasises 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. Dostoevsky 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.[201][202]

Crime and Punishment

Main article: Crime and Punishment

The novel Crime and Punishment has received both critical and popular acclaim. It remains one of the most influential and widely read novels in Russian literature,[203] and has been sometimes described as Dostoevsky's magnum opus.[204]

Crime and Punishment follows the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in Saint Petersburg who plans to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker, an old woman who stores money and valuable objects in her flat. He theorises that with the money he could liberate himself from poverty and go on to perform great deeds, and seeks to convince himself that certain crimes are justifiable if they are committed in order to remove obstacles to the higher goals of 'extraordinary' men. Once the deed is done, however, he finds himself racked with confusion, paranoia, and disgust. His theoretical justifications lose all their power as he struggles with guilt and horror and confronts both the internal and external consequences of his deed.

Strakhov remarked that "Only Crime and Punishment was read in 1866" and that Dostoevsky had managed to portray a Russian person aptly and realistically.[205] In contrast, 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".[206] The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes Crime and Punishment as "a masterpiece" and "one of the finest studies of the psychopathology of guilt written in any language."[207]

The Idiot

Main article: The Idiot

The title is an ironic reference to the central character of the novel, Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, a young man whose goodness, open-hearted simplicity and guilelessness lead many of the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight. In the character of Prince Myshkin, Dostoevsky set himself the task of depicting "the positively good and beautiful man."[208] The novel examines the consequences of placing such a singular individual at the centre of the conflicts, desires, passions and egoism of worldly society, both for the man himself and for those with whom he becomes involved.

Joseph Frank describes The Idiot as "the most personal of all Dostoevsky's major works, the book in which he embodies his most intimate, cherished, and sacred convictions."[209] It includes descriptions of some of his most intense personal ordeals, such as epilepsy and mock execution, and explores moral, spiritual and philosophical themes consequent upon them. His primary motivation in writing the novel was to subject his own highest ideal, that of true Christian love, to the crucible of contemporary Russian society.

Demons

Main article: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

Demons is a social and political satire, a psychological drama, and large-scale tragedy. Joyce Carol Oates has described it as "Dostoevsky's most confused and violent novel, and his most satisfactorily 'tragic' work."[210] According to Ronald Hingley, it is Dostoevsky's "greatest onslaught on Nihilism", and "one of humanity's most impressive achievements—perhaps even its supreme achievement—in the art of prose fiction."[211]

Demons is an allegory of the potentially catastrophic consequences of the political and moral nihilism that were becoming prevalent in Russia in the 1860s.[212] A fictional town descends into chaos as it becomes the focal point of an attempted revolution, orchestrated by master conspirator Pyotr Verkhovensky. The mysterious aristocratic figure of Nikolai Stavrogin—Verkhovensky's counterpart in the moral sphere—dominates the book, exercising an extraordinary influence over the hearts and minds of almost all the other characters. The idealistic, Western-influenced generation of the 1840s, epitomized in the character of Stepan Verkhovensky (who is both Pyotr Verkhovensky's father and Nikolai Stavrogin's childhood teacher), are presented as the unconscious progenitors and helpless accomplices of the "demonic" forces that take possession of the town.

The Brothers Karamazov

Main article: The Brothers Karamazov

At nearly 800 pages, The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky's largest work. It received both critical and popular acclaim and is often cited as his magnum opus.[213] 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.[214][215]

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 Dostoevsky 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.[216][214][215]

Sigmund Freud wrote an essay called "Dostoevsky and Parricide" (German: Dostojewski und die Vatertötung) as an introductory article to a scholarly collection on the “The Brothers Karamazov”.

Bibliography

Main article: Fyodor Dostoevsky bibliography

Essay collections

Translations

Personal letters

  • (1912) Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to His Family and Friends by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (Author), translator Ethel Colburn Mayne Kessinger Publishing, LLC (26 May 2006) ISBN 978-1-4286-1333-1

Posthumously published notebooks

References

Notes

  1. ^ His name has been variously transcribed into English, his first name sometimes being rendered as Theodore or Fedor.
  2. ^ Before the postrevolutionary orthographic reform which, among other things, replaced the Cyrillic letter Ѳ with Ф, Dostoevsky's name was written Ѳедоръ Михайловичъ Достоевскій.
  3. ^ In Old Style dates: 30 October 1821 – 28 January 1881
  4. ^ Time magazine was a popular periodical with more than 4,000 subscribers before it was closed on 24 May 1863 by the Tsarist Regime after publishing an essay by Nikolay Strakhov about the Polish revolt in Russia. Vremya and its 1864 successor Epokha expressed the philosophy of the conservative and Slavophile movement Pochvennichestvo, supported by Dostoevsky during his term of imprisonment and in the following years.[64]
  5. ^ Another reason for his abstinence might have been the closure of casinos in Germany in 1872 and 1873 (it was not until the rise of Adolf Hitler that they were reopened)[84] or his entering a synagogue that he confused with a gambling hall. According to biographer Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky took that as a sign not to gamble any more.[85]
  6. ^ The haemorrhage could also have been triggered by heated disputes with his sister Vera about his aunt Aleksandra Kumanina's estate, which was settled on 30 March and discussed in the St Petersburg City Court on 24 July 1879.[108][109] Anna later acquired a part of his estate consisting of around 185 desiatina (around 500 acres or 202 ha) of forest and 92 desiatina of farmland.[110]

Citations

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011). Roach, Peter; Setter, Jane; Esling, John (eds.). "Dostoievski, Dostoevsky". Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary (18th ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-15255-6.
  2. ^ "Dostoevsky". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
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  4. ^ Scanlan 2002.
  5. ^ Leigh, David J. (2010). "The Philosophy and Theology of Fyodor Dostoevsky". Ultimate Reality and Meaning. 33 (1–2): 85–103. doi:10.3138/uram.33.1-2.85.
  6. ^ Morson, Gary Saul. "Fyodor Dostoyevsky". Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
  7. ^ Dominique Arban, Dostoïevski, Seuil, 1995, p. 5
  8. ^ a b Kjetsaa 1989, pp. 1–5.
  9. ^ a b Frank 1979, pp. 6–22.
  10. ^ Kjetsaa 1989, p. 11.
  11. ^ Terras, Victor (1985). Handbook of Russian Literature. Yale University Press. p. 102. ISBN 978-0-300-04868-1.
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  13. ^ a b Breger 2008, p. 72.
  14. ^ Leatherbarrow 2002, p. 23.
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  78. ^ Andrew Kaufman (31 August 2021). The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk, and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky. Riverhead Books. ISBN 0-525-53714-7. OL 34129769M. Wikidata Q109057625.
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  122. ^ Mochulsky 1967, pp. 183–84.
  123. ^ Frank 2009, pp. 445–46.
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  125. ^ Sekirin 1997, p. 169.
  126. ^ a b c Lantz 2004, pp. 183–89.
  127. ^ a b c Lantz 2004, pp. 323–27.
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  130. ^ Ward, Bruce K. (30 October 2010). Dostoyevsky's Critique of the West: The Quest for the Earthly Paradise. ISBN 9781554588169. Retrieved 3 July 2019.
  131. ^ Eberstadt, Fernanda (1987). "Dostoevsky and the Jews". Commentary Magazine.
  132. ^ Frank, Joseph; Goldstein, David I. (1989). Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Rutgers. pp. 437–38.
  133. ^ dakaras. "The Diary Of A Writer : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive". Retrieved 26 January 2022.
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  135. ^ a b Frank 1979, p. 401.
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  139. ^ Frank 2009, pp. 24, 30.
  140. ^ a b Jones 2005, p. 2.
  141. ^ Jones 2005, p. 6.
  142. ^ Jones 2005, p. 7.
  143. ^ Frank 1979, pp. 22–23.
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  148. ^ Terras 1998, p. 59.
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  152. ^ Lantz 2004, pp. 361–64.
  153. ^ Scanlan 2002, p. 59.
  154. ^ a b Bakhtin, M.M. (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  155. ^ Kvas, Kornelije (2019). The Boundaries of Realism in World Literature. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books. p. 101. ISBN 978-1-7936-0910-6.
  156. ^ Lauer 2000, p. 364.
  157. ^ Frank, Joseph (2010). p. 369
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  159. ^ Vucinich, Alexander (2001). Einstein and Soviet Ideology. p. 181. Bibcode:2002PhT....55i..59V. doi:10.1063/1.1522218. ISBN 978-0-8047-4209-2. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
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  168. ^ Struc, Roman S. (1981). Written at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. "Kafka and Dostoevsky as 'Blood Relatives'". Dostoevsky Studies. Austria. 2: 111–17. OCLC 7475685 – via University of Toronto.
  169. ^ Müller 1982, p. 8.
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  171. ^ Rand, Ayn. The Romantic Manifesto.
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  173. ^ Lavrin 2005, p. 38.
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  176. ^ "'Oru Sankeerthanam Pole' goes into 100th edition". The New Indian Express. No. 26 November 2017.
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  179. ^ Радио ФИНАМ ФМ 99.6 (in Russian). ФИНАМ. Retrieved 20 April 2013.
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  183. ^ November 2021, Dmitry Babich in Society on 10 (10 November 2021). "Dostoyevsky's 200th Anniversary Celebrated in Kazakhstan, the Land of His Formative Years". The Astana Times. Retrieved 10 November 2021.
  184. ^ a b The 1872 novel ″Demons″, Russian: Бесы, Bésy, by Fyodor Dostoevsky is sometimes also titled The Possessed or The Devils
  185. ^ Terras 1998, pp. 3–4.
  186. ^ Nabokov, Vladamir (1981). Lectures on Russian Literature. Harvest Book/Harcourt. pp. 97–135. ISBN 978-0-15-602776-2.
  187. ^ Murr, Edwin. DER 99.
  188. ^ Kjetsaa 1989, p. foreword.
  189. ^ Meier-Gräfe 1988, p. 492.
  190. ^ Bloshteyn 2007, p. 26.
  191. ^ Jones & Terry 2010, p. 216.
  192. ^ France, Peter (2001). The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. Oxford University Press. pp. 594–98. ISBN 978-0-19-818359-4.
  193. ^ Burry 2011, p. 3.
  194. ^ Burry 2011, p. 5.
  195. ^ . Forbidden Books of Russian Writers and Literary Scientists, 1917–1991. Archived from the original on 29 July 2017. Retrieved 31 August 2013.
  196. ^ . Forbidden Books of Russian Writers and Literary Scientists, 1917–1991. Archived from the original on 20 February 2018. Retrieved 31 August 2013.
  197. ^ Bloshteyn 2007, pp. 7–8.
  198. ^ Lenin read Dostoevsky in a more-nuanced way than others, describing Demons (1871–72) as "repulsive but great"; Geoff Waite with Francesca Cernia Slovin, "Nietzsche with Dostoevsky: Unrequited Collaborators in Crime without Punishment", in Jeff Love and Jeffrey Metzger, eds., Nietzsche and Dostoevsky: Philosophy, Morality, Tragedy (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2016), ISBN 0810133962. For a summary of the Soviet reception of Dostoevsky, see Vladimir Shlapentokh, Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power: The Post-Stalin Era (Princeton Univ. Press, 1990), 94.
  199. ^ Vladimir Bushin. [Fids from a young Papuan]. Pravda (in Russian). Archived from the original on 29 October 2013.
  200. ^ Kjetsaa 1989, pp. 69–103.
  201. ^ Halliwell, Martin (2006). Transatlantic Modernism: Moral Dilemmas in Modernist Fiction. Edinburgh University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-7486-2393-8.
  202. ^ Eysteinsson, Ástráður (1990). The Concept of Modernism. Cornell University Press. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-8014-8077-5.
  203. ^ "Greatest Russian Novels of All Time". Retrieved 21 July 2020.
  204. ^ Arntfield, Michael (2017). Murder in Plain English. New York: Prometheus. p. 42. ISBN 9781633882546.
  205. ^ Kjetsaa 1989, p. 183.
  206. ^ Frank 1997, p. 45, 60–182.
  207. ^ Cregan-Reid, Vybarr. "Crime and Punishment". Retrieved 21 July 2020.
  208. ^ Dostoevsky letter quoted in Peace, Richard (1971). Dostoyevsky: An Examination of the Major Novels. Cambridge University Press. pp. 59–63. ISBN 0-521-07911-X.
  209. ^ Frank, Joseph (2010). Dostoevsky A Writer in His Time. Princeton University Press. p. 577. ISBN 9780691128191.
  210. ^ Joyce Carol Oates: Tragic Rites In Dostoevsky's The Possessed, p. 3
  211. ^ Hingley, Ronald (1978). Dostoyevsky His Life and Work. London: Paul Elek Limited. pp. 158–59. ISBN 0-236-40121-1.
  212. ^ Peter Rollberg (2014) Mastermind, Terrorist, Enigma: Dostoevsky's Nikolai Stavrogin, Perspectives on Political Science, 43:3, 143-152.
  213. ^ Frank 2003, pp. 390–441.
  214. ^ a b Frank 1997, pp. 567–705.
  215. ^ a b Kjetsaa 1989, pp. 337–414.
  216. ^ Müller 1982, pp. 91–103.
  217. ^ Dostoyefsky, F.M. "A Beggar Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree" in Little Russian Masterpieces. Zénaïde A. Ragozin (Ed., Trans.). New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1920. p. 172.

Bibliography

  • Bercken, Wil van den (2011). Christian Fiction and Religious Realism in the Novels of Dostoevsky. Anthem Press. ISBN 978-0-85728-976-6.
  • Bloshteyn, Maria R. (2007). The Making of a Counter-Culture Icon: Henry Miller's Dostoevsky. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-9228-1.
  • Breger, Louis (2008). Dostoevsky: The Author As Psychoanalyst. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-0843-9.
  • Burry, Alexander (2011). Multi-Mediated Dostoevsky: Transposing Novels Into Opera, Film, and Drama. Northwestern University Press. ISBN 978-0-8101-2715-9.
  • Cassedy, Steven (2005). Dostoevsky's Religion. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-5137-7.
  • Cicovacki, Predrag (2012). Dostoevsky and the Affirmation of Life. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-4606-6.
  • Frank, Joseph (1981). "Foreword". In Goldstein, David (ed.). Dostoevsky and the Jews. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-71528-8.
  • Jones, Malcolm V. (2005). Dostoevsky And the Dynamics of Religious Experience. Anthem Press. ISBN 978-1-84331-205-5.
  • Jones, Malcolm V.; Terry, Garth M. (2010). New Essays on Dostoyevsky. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-15531-1.
  • Lantz, Kenneth A. (2004). The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-30384-5.
  • Lauer, Reinhard (2000). Geschichte der Russischen Literatur: von 1700 bis zur Gegenwart (in German). Verlag C.H. Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-50267-5.
  • Lavrin, Janko (2005). Dostoevsky: A Study. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4179-8844-0.
  • Leatherbarrow, William J (2002). The Cambridge Companion to Dostoevskii. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-65473-9.
  • Maurina, Zenta (1940). A Prophet of the Soul: Fyodor Dostoievsky. Translated by C. P. Finlayson. James Clarke & Co. Ltd.
  • Meier-Gräfe, Julius (1988) [1926]. Dostojewski der Dichter (in German). Insel Verlag. ISBN 978-3-458-32799-8.
  • Mochulsky, Konstantin (1967) [1967]. Dostoevsky: His Life and Work. Minihan, Michael A. (translator). Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-01299-5.
  • Müller, Ludolf (1982). Dostojewskij: Sein Leben, Sein Werk, Sein Vermächtnis (in German). Erich Wewel Verlag. ISBN 978-3-87904-100-8.
  • Paperno, Irina (1997). Suicide as a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky's Russia. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-8425-4.
  • Pattison, George; Thompson, Diane Oenning (2001). Dostoevsky and the Christian tradition. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-78278-4.
  • Popović, Justin (2007). Философия и религия Достоевского [Philosophical and Religious Beliefs of Dostoyevsky] (in Russian). ISBN 978-985-90125-1-8.
  • Scanlan, James Patrick (2002). Dostoevsky the Thinker: A Philosophical Study. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-3994-0.
  • Sekirin, Peter, ed. (1997). The Dostoevsky Archive: Firsthand Accounts of the Novelist from Contemporaries' Memoirs and Rare Periodicals, Most Translated Into English for the First Time, with a Detailed Lifetime Chronology and Annotated Bibliography. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-0264-9.
  • Terras, Victor (1998). Reading Dostoevsky. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-16054-8.
Biographies

Further reading

  • Allen, James Sloan (2008), "Condemned to Be Free," Worldly Wisdom: Great Books and the Meanings of Life, Savannah: Frederic C. Beil. ISBN 978-1-929490-35-6
  • Birmingham, Kevin. 2021. The sinner and the saint: Dostoevsky and the gentleman murderer who inspired a masterpiece. New York: Penguin.
  • Berdyaev, Nicolas (1948). The Russian Idea, The Macmillan Company.
  • Bierbaum, Otto Julius (1910–1911). "Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche," The Hibbert Journal, Vol. IX.
  • Hubben, William. (1997). Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Kafka: Four Prophets of Our Destiny, Simon & Schuster. Originally published in 1952.
  • Lavrin, Janko (1918). , , , , , , , , , The New Age, Vol. XXII, Nos. 12–21.
  • Lavrin, Janko (1918). The New Age, Vol. XXII, No. 24, pp. 465–66.
  • Maeztu, Ramiro de (1918). The New Age, Vol. XXII, No. 23, 1918, pp. 449–51.
  • Manning, Clarence Augustus (1922). "Dostoyevsky and Modern Russian Literature," The Sewanee Review, Vol. 30, No. 3.
  • Seccombe, Thomas (1911). "Dostoievsky, Feodor Mikhailovich" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 438–439.
  • Simmons, Ernest J. (1940). Dostoevsky: The Making Of A Novelist, Vintage Books.
  • Westbrook, Perry D. (1961). The Greatness of Man: An Essay on Dostoyevsky and Whitman. New York: Thomas Yoseloff.

External links

Digital collections

  • Works by Fyodor Dostoevsky in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
  • Works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky at Project Gutenberg
  • Works by or about Fyodor Dostoevsky at Internet Archive
  • Works by Fyodor Dostoevsky at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  
  • Fyodor Dostoyevsky collection at One More Library
  • The complete works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (in Russian) – the online published bibliography in its original language

Scholarly works

  • International Dostoevsky Society – a network of scholars dedicated to studying the life and works of Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • FyodorDostoevsky.com – discussion forums, essays, quotes, photos, biography of the author
  • ISSN 1013-2309, a journal published from 1980 to 1988

Other links

  • Dostoevsky's family tree
  • at the Internet Book List
  • Dostoevsky, Fyodor (8 June 2016). A Novel in Nine Letters. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help) Also available in the original Russian 15 April 2018 at the Wayback Machine.
  • Dostoevsky, Fyodor (4 March 2017). . Archived from the original on 15 April 2018. Retrieved 15 April 2018. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  • Newspaper clippings about Fyodor Dostoevsky in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
  • Places of Fyodor Dostoevsky in Saint Petersburg

August 19, 2023
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Dostoevsky redirects here For the surname see Dostoevsky surname In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming conventions the patronymic is Mikhailovich and the family name is Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky a UK ˌ d ɒ s t ɔɪ ˈ ɛ f s k i 1 US ˌ d ɒ s t e ˈ j ɛ f s k i ˌ d ʌ s 2 Russian pre 1918 Ѳedor Mihajlovich Dostoevskij post 1918 Fyodor Mihajlovich Dostoevskij b tr Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevskiy IPA ˈfʲɵder mʲɪˈxajlevʲɪdʑ destɐˈjefskʲɪj listen 11 November 1821 9 February 1881 3 c sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist short story writer essayist and journalist Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces 4 Fyodor DostoevskyPortrait of Fyodor Dostoyevsky by Vasily Perov c 1872Native nameFyodor Mihajlovich DostoevskijBornFyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky 1821 11 11 11 November 1821Moscow Russian EmpireDied9 February 1881 1881 02 09 aged 59 Saint Petersburg Russian EmpireResting placeTikhvin Cemetery Saint PetersburgOccupationWriterjournalistmilitary engineerLanguageRussianEducationNikolayev Military Engineering InstitutePeriodModern 19th century GenresPsychological fiction novelnovellashort story opinion journalism polemicessaysketchfeuilletonepistlememoir literary criticismdiarypoetrytranslationorationSubjectslistLiterary movementRealism naturalismYears active1844 1880Notable worksNotes from Underground 1864 Crime and Punishment 1866 The Idiot 1868 1869 Demons 1871 1872 The Brothers Karamazov 1879 1880 A Writer s DiarySpouseMaria Dmitriyevna Isaeva m 1857 died 1864 wbr Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina m 1867 wbr Children4 including Lyubov DostoevskayaSignatureDostoevsky s literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political social and spiritual atmospheres of 19th century Russia and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment 1866 The Idiot 1869 Demons 1872 and The Brothers Karamazov 1880 His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature 5 Born in Moscow in 1821 Dostoevsky 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 Saint Petersburg s literary circles However he was arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group the Petrashevsky Circle that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia Dostoevsky was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted at the last moment He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile In the following years Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky s body of work consists of thirteen novels three novellas seventeen short stories and numerous other works His writings were widely read both within and beyond his native Russia and influenced an equally great number of later writers including Russians such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean Paul Sartre and the emergence of Existentialism and Freudianism 6 His books have been translated into more than 170 languages and served as the inspiration for many films Contents 1 Ancestry 2 Childhood 1821 1836 3 Youth 1836 1843 4 Career 4 1 Early career 1844 1849 4 2 Siberian exile 1849 1854 4 3 Release from prison and first marriage 1854 1866 4 4 Second marriage and honeymoon 1866 1871 4 5 Back in Russia 1871 1875 4 6 Last years 1876 1881 5 Death 6 Personal life 6 1 Extramarital affairs 6 2 Political beliefs 6 3 Ethnic beliefs 6 4 Religious beliefs 7 Themes and style 8 Legacy 8 1 Reception and influence 8 2 Honours 8 3 Criticism 8 4 Reputation 9 Works 9 1 Major works 9 1 1 Poor Folk 9 1 2 Notes from Underground 9 1 3 Crime and Punishment 9 1 4 The Idiot 9 1 5 Demons 9 1 6 The Brothers Karamazov 9 2 Bibliography 9 2 1 Novels and novellas 9 2 2 Short stories 9 2 3 Essay collections 9 2 4 Translations 9 2 5 Personal letters 9 2 6 Posthumously published notebooks 10 References 10 1 Notes 10 2 Citations 10 3 Bibliography 11 Further reading 12 External linksAncestry EditParents Maria Fyodorovna Dostoevskaya Mikhail Andreyevich Dostoevsky Dostoevsky s paternal ancestors were part of a noble family of Russian Orthodox Christians The family traced its roots back to Danilo Irtishch who was granted lands in the Pinsk region for centuries part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania now in modern day Belarus in 1509 for his services under a local prince his progeny then taking the name Dostoevsky based on a village there called Dostoievo derived from Old Polish dostojnik dignitary 7 Dostoevsky s immediate ancestors on his mother s side were merchants the male line on his father s side were priests 8 9 In 1809 the 20 year old Mikhail Dostoevsky 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 a senior physician In 1819 he married Maria Nechayeva The following year he took up a post at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor In 1828 when his two sons Mikhail and Fyodor were eight and seven respectively 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 10 Dostoevsky s parents subsequently had six more children Varvara 1822 1892 Andrei 1825 1897 Lyubov born and died 1829 Vera 1829 1896 Nikolai 1831 1883 and Aleksandra 1835 1889 11 8 9 Childhood 1821 1836 EditFyodor Dostoevsky born on 11 November O S 30 October 1821 in Moscow was the second child of Dr Mikhail Dostoevsky and Maria Dostoevskaya born 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 12 Dostoevsky encountered the patients who were at the lower end of the Russian social scale when playing in the hospital gardens 13 Dostoevsky 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 upbringing and his love for fictional stories 14 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 the works from writer Ann Radcliffe romantic works by Schiller and Goethe heroic tales by Miguel de Cervantes and Walter Scott and Homer s epics 15 16 Dostoevsky was greatly influenced by the work of Nikolai Gogol 17 Although his father s approach to education has been described as strict and harsh 18 Dostoevsky himself reported that his imagination was brought alive by nightly readings by his parents 13 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 theme of the desire of a mature man for a young girl appears in The Devils The Brothers Karamazov Crime and Punishment and other writings 19 An incident involving a family servant or serf in the estate in Darovoye is described in The Peasant Marey when the young Dostoevsky imagines hearing a wolf in the forest Marey who is working nearby comforts him 20 Although Dostoevsky had a delicate physical constitution his parents described him as hot headed stubborn and cheeky 21 In 1833 Dostoevsky s father who was profoundly religious sent him to a French boarding school and then to the Chermak boarding school He was described as a pale introverted dreamer and an over excitable romantic 22 To pay the school fees his father borrowed money and extended his private medical practice Dostoevsky felt out of place among his aristocratic classmates at the Moscow school and the experience was later reflected in some of his works notably The Adolescent 23 16 Youth 1836 1843 Edit Dostoevsky as a military engineerOn 27 September 1837 Dostoevsky s mother died of tuberculosis The previous May his parents had sent Dostoevsky and his brother Mikhail to Saint Petersburg to attend the free Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute forcing the brothers to abandon their academic studies for military careers Dostoevsky entered the academy in January 1838 but only with the help of family members Mikhail was refused admission on health grounds and was sent to an academy in Reval now Tallinn Estonia 24 25 Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky 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 26 Dostoevsky 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 27 28 Signs of Dostoevsky s epilepsy may have first appeared on learning of the death of his father on 16 June 1839 29 although the reports of a seizure originated from accounts written by his daughter later expanded by Sigmund Freud 30 which are now considered to be unreliable 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 Dostoevsky s brother Andrei perpetuated the story 31 After his father s death Dostoevsky continued his studies passed his exams and obtained the rank of engineer cadet entitling him to live away from the academy He visited Mikhail in Reval Tallinn and frequently attended concerts operas plays and ballets During this time two of his friends introduced him to gambling 32 28 On 12 August 1843 Dostoevsky took a job as a lieutenant engineer and lived with Adolph Totleben in an apartment owned by Dr Rizenkampf a friend of Mikhail Rizenkampf characterised 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 33 Dostoevsky s first completed literary work a translation of Honore de Balzac s novel Eugenie Grandet was published in June and July 1843 in the 6th and 7th volumes of the journal Repertoire and Pantheon 34 35 followed by several other translations None were successful and his financial difficulties led him to write a novel 36 28 Career EditEarly career 1844 1849 Edit Dostoevsky 1847Dostoevsky completed his first novel Poor Folk in May 1845 His friend Dmitry Grigorovich with whom he was sharing an apartment at the time took the manuscript to the poet Nikolay Nekrasov who in turn showed it to the renowned and influential literary critic Vissarion Belinsky Belinsky described it as Russia s first social novel 37 Poor Folk was released on 15 January 1846 in the St Petersburg Collection almanac and became a commercial success 38 39 Dostoevsky felt that his military career would endanger his now flourishing literary career so he wrote a letter 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 the same time Dostoevsky discovered socialism through the writings of French thinkers Fourier Cabet Proudhon and Saint Simon Through his relationship with Belinsky he expanded his knowledge of the philosophy of socialism He was attracted to its logic its sense of justice and its preoccupation with the destitute and the disadvantaged However his Russian Orthodox faith and religious sensibilities could not accord with Belinsky s admixture of atheism utilitarianism and scientific materialism leading to increasing friction between them Dostoevsky eventually parted with him and his associates 40 41 After The Double received negative reviews including a particularly scathing one from Belinsky Dostoevsky s health declined and his seizures became more frequent but he continued writing From 1846 to 1848 he published several short stories in the magazine Notes of the Fatherland including Mr Prokharchin The Landlady A Weak Heart and White Nights The negative reception of these stories combined with his health problems and Belinsky s attacks caused him distress and financial difficulty but this was greatly alleviated when he joined the utopian socialist Beketov circle a tightly knit community which helped him to survive When the circle dissolved Dostoevsky befriended Apollon Maykov and his brother Valerian In 1846 on the recommendation of the poet Aleksey Pleshcheyev 42 he joined the 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 43 Dostoevsky used the circle s library on Saturdays and Sundays and occasionally participated in their discussions on freedom from censorship and the abolition of serfdom 44 45 Bakunin s description however was not true of the aristocrat Nikolay Speshnev who joined the circle in 1848 and set about creating a secret revolutionary society from amongst its members Dostoevsky himself became a member of this society was aware of its conspiratorial aims and actively participated although he harboured significant doubts about their actions and intentions 46 In 1849 the first parts of Netochka Nezvanova a novel Dostoevsky had been planning since 1846 were published in Notes of the Fatherland but his banishment ended the project Dostoevsky never attempted to complete it 47 Siberian exile 1849 1854 Edit A sketch of the Petrashevsky Circle mock executionThe members of the Petrashevsky Circle were denounced to Liprandi an official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs Dostoevsky was accused of reading works by Belinsky including the banned Letter to Gogol 48 and of circulating copies of these and other works Antonelli the government agent who had reported the group wrote in his statement that at least one of the papers criticised Russian politics and religion Dostoevsky responded to these charges by declaring that he had read the essays only as a literary monument neither more nor less he spoke of personality and human egoism rather than of politics Even so he and his fellow conspirators were arrested on 23 April 1849 at the request of Count A Orlov and Tsar Nicholas I who feared a revolution like the Decembrist revolt of 1825 in Russia and the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe The members were held in the well defended Peter and Paul Fortress which housed the most dangerous convicts 49 50 51 The case was discussed for four months by an investigative commission headed by the Tsar with Adjutant General Ivan Nabokov senator Prince Pavel Gagarin Prince 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 Saint Petersburg on 23 December 1849 They were split into three man groups and the first group was taken in front of the firing squad Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky later described the experience of what he believed to be the last moments of his life in his novel The Idiot The story of a young man sentenced to death by firing squad but reprieved at the last moment is recounted by the main character Prince Myshkin who describes the experience from the point of view of the victim and considers the philosophical and spiritual implications Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky consoled the other prisoners such as the Petrashevist Ivan Yastrzhembsky who was surprised by Dostoevsky s kindness and eventually abandoned his decision to kill himself 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 Dostoevsky reached Omsk 50 52 together with just one other member of the Petrashevsky Circle the writer Sergei Durov 53 Dostoevsky 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 54 Classified as one of the most dangerous convicts Dostoevsky had his hands and feet shackled until his release He was only permitted to read his New Testament Bible 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 Dostoevsky was occasionally sent to the military hospital where he read newspapers and Dickens novels He was respected by most of the other prisoners but despised by some Polish political prisoners because of his Russian nationalism and anti Polish sentiments 55 Release from prison and first marriage 1854 1866 Edit After his release on 14 February 1854 Dostoevsky asked Mikhail to help him financially and to send him books by Vico Guizot Ranke Hegel and Kant 56 The House of the Dead based on his experience in prison was published in 1861 in the journal Vremya Time it was the first published novel about Russian prisons 57 Before moving in mid March to Semipalatinsk where he was forced to serve in the Siberian Army Corps of the Seventh Line Battalion Dostoevsky met geographer Pyotr Semyonov and ethnographer Shokan Walikhanuli Around November 1854 he met Baron Alexander Egorovich Wrangel an admirer of his books who had attended the aborted execution They both rented houses in the Cossack Garden outside Semipalatinsk Wrangel remarked that Dostoevsky looked morose His sickly pale face was covered with freckles and his blond hair was cut short He was a little over average height and looked at me intensely with his sharp grey blue eyes It was as if he were trying to look into my soul and discover what kind of man I was 58 59 60 In Semipalatinsk Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky 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 and her son then moved with Dostoevsky to Barnaul In 1856 Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky 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 61 In 1859 he was released from military service because of deteriorating health and was granted permission to return to European Russia first to Tver where he met his brother for the first time in ten years and then to St Petersburg 62 63 Dostoevsky in Paris 1863The short story A Little Hero Dostoevsky s only work completed in prison appeared in a journal but Uncle s Dream and The Village of Stepanchikovo were not published until 1860 Notes from the House of the Dead was released in Russky Mir Russian World in September 1860 Humiliated and Insulted was published in the new Vremya magazine d which had been created with the help of funds from his brother s cigarette factory 65 66 67 Dostoevsky 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 the essay Winter Notes on Summer Impressions in which he also criticised capitalism social modernisation materialism Catholicism and Protestantism 68 69 From August to October 1863 Dostoevsky 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 his brother Mikhail died and Dostoevsky 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 70 71 Second marriage and honeymoon 1866 1871 Edit The first two parts of Crime and Punishment were published in January and February 1866 in the periodical The Russian Messenger 72 attracting at least 500 new subscribers to the magazine 73 Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky s friends Milyukov advised him to hire a secretary Dostoevsky contacted stenographer Pavel Olkhin from Saint Petersburg who recommended his pupil the twenty year old Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina Her shorthand helped Dostoevsky to complete The Gambler on 30 October after 26 days work 74 75 She remarked that Dostoevsky 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 76 Memorial plaque to Dostoevsky in Baden BadenOn 15 February 1867 Dostoevsky 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 Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden where he sought inspiration for his writing They continued their trip through Germany visiting Frankfurt Darmstadt Heidelberg and Karlsruhe They spent five weeks in Baden Baden where Dostoevsky had a quarrel with Turgenev and again lost much money at the roulette table 77 At one point his wife was reportedly forced to pawn her underwear 78 The couple travelled on to Geneva 79 In September 1867 Dostoevsky 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 serialisation began in The Russian Messengerin January 1868 Plaque for baby SofyaTheir first child Sofya had been conceived in Baden Baden and was born in Geneva on 5 March 1868 The baby died of pneumonia three months later and Anna recalled how Dostoevsky wept and sobbed like a woman in despair 80 Sofya was buried at the Cimetiere des Rois Cemetery of Kings which is considered the Genevan Pantheon The grave was later dissolved but in 1986 the International Dostoevsky Society donated a commemorative plaque 81 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 Messengerin February 1869 82 83 Anna gave birth to their second daughter Lyubov on 26 September 1869 in Dresden In April 1871 Dostoevsky 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 e After hearing news that the socialist revolutionary group People s Vengeance had murdered one of its own members Ivan Ivanov on 21 November 1869 Dostoevsky began writing Demons 86 In 1871 Dostoevsky 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 87 88 Back in Russia 1871 1875 Edit Dostoevsky left in the Haymarket 21 22 March 1874Back in Russia in July 1871 the family was again in financial trouble and had to sell their remaining possessions Their son Fyodor was born on 16 July and they moved to an apartment near the Institute of Technology soon after They hoped to cancel their large debts by selling their rental house in Peski but difficulties with the tenant resulted in a relatively low selling price and disputes with their creditors continued Anna proposed that they raise money on her husband s copyrights and negotiate with the creditors to pay off their debts in installments 89 90 Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky s political progression to conservatism Around early 1872 the family spent several months in Staraya Russa a town known for its mineral spa Dostoevsky s work was delayed when Anna s sister Maria Svatkovskaya died on 1 May 1872 from either typhus or malaria 91 and Anna developed an abscess on her throat 89 92 The family returned to St Petersburg in September Demons was finished on 26 November and released in January 1873 by the Dostoevsky Publishing Company which was founded by Dostoevsky and his wife Although they accepted only cash payments and the bookshop was in their own apartment the business was successful and they sold around 3 000 copies of Demons Anna managed the finances Dostoevsky proposed that they establish a new periodical which would be called A Writer s Diary and would include a collection of essays but funds were lacking and the Diary was published in Vladimir Meshchersky s The Citizen beginning on 1 January in return for a salary of 3 000 rubles per year In the summer of 1873 Anna returned to Staraya Russa with the children while Dostoevsky stayed in St Petersburg to continue with his Diary 93 94 In March 1874 Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky offered to sell a new novel he had not yet begun to write to The Russian Messenger 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 Dostoevsky 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 95 96 Anna proposed that they spend the winter in Staraya Russa to allow Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky s subsequent works 97 98 Last years 1876 1881 Edit Dostoevsky 1879In early 1876 Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky began experiencing shortness of breath again He visited Ems for the 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 Dostoevsky 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 Countess Sophia Tolstaya Yakov Polonsky Sergei Witte Alexey Suvorin Anton Rubinstein and Ilya Repin 99 100 Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky 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 Litteraire et Artistique Internationale whose members included Victor Hugo Ivan Turgenev Paul Heyse Alfred Tennyson Anthony Trollope Henry Longfellow Ralph Waldo Emerson and Leo Tolstoy Dostoevsky 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 101 102 Dostoevsky s funeralOn 3 February 1880 Dostoevsky was elected vice president of the Slavic Benevolent Society and he was invited to speak at the unveiling of the Pushkin memorial in Moscow On 8 June he delivered his speech giving an impressive performance that had a significant emotional impact on his audience His speech was met with thunderous applause and even his long time rival Turgenev embraced him Konstantin Staniukovich praised the speech in his essay The Pushkin Anniversary and Dostoevsky s Speech in The Business writing that the language of Dostoevsky s Pushkin Speech really looks like a sermon He speaks with the tone of a prophet He makes a sermon like a pastor it is very deep sincere and we understand that he wants to impress the emotions of his listeners 103 The speech was criticised later by liberal political scientist Alexander Gradovsky who thought that Dostoevsky idolised the people 104 and by conservative thinker Konstantin Leontiev who in his essay On Universal Love compared the speech to French utopian socialism 105 The attacks led to a further deterioration in his health 106 107 Death Edit Dostoevsky on his bier drawing by Ivan Kramskoi 1881 Dostoevsky s grave in Saint PetersburgOn 6 February O S 25 January 1881 while searching for members of the terrorist organisation Narodnaya Volya The People s Will who would soon assassinate Tsar Alexander II the Tsar s secret police executed a search warrant in the apartment of one of Dostoevsky s neighbours citation needed On the following day Dostoevsky suffered a pulmonary haemorrhage Anna denied that the search had caused it saying that the haemorrhage had occurred after her husband had been looking for a dropped pen holder f After another haemorrhage Anna called the doctors who gave a poor prognosis A third haemorrhage followed shortly afterwards 111 112 While seeing his children before dying Dostoevsky requested that the parable of the Prodigal Son be read to his children The profound meaning of this request is pointed out by Frank It was this parable of transgression repentance and forgiveness that he wished to leave as a last heritage to his children and it may well be seen as his own ultimate understanding of the meaning of his life and the message of his work 113 Among Dostoevsky s last words was his quotation of Matthew 3 14 15 But John forbad him saying I have a 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 114 His last words to his wife Anna were Remember Anya I have always loved you passionately and have never been unfaithful to you ever even in my thoughts 115 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 116 near his favourite poets Nikolay Karamzin and Vasily 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 111 117 Verily verily I say unto you Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone but if it dies it bringeth forth much fruit John 12 24Personal life EditExtramarital affairs Edit Dostoevsky 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 118 He admitted later that he was uncertain about their relationship 119 According to Anna Dostoevskaya s memoirs Dostoevsky 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 120 Dostoevsky and Apollonia Polina Suslova had a short but intimate affair which peaked in the winter of 1862 1863 Suslova s dalliance with a Spaniard in late spring and Dostoevsky 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 61 In 1858 Dostoevsky had a romance with comic actress Aleksandra Ivanovna Schubert Although she divorced Dostoevsky s friend Stepan Yanovsky she would not live with him Dostoevsky did not love her either but they were probably good friends She wrote that he became very attracted to me 121 122 Through a worker in Epoch Dostoevsky learned of the Russian born Martha Brown nee Elizaveta Andreyevna Chlebnikova who had had affairs with several westerners Her relationship with Dostoevsky is known only through letters written between November 1864 and January 1865 123 124 In 1865 Dostoevsky met Anna Korvin Krukovskaya Their relationship is not verified Anna Dostoevskaya spoke of a good affair but Korvin Krukovskaya s sister the mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya thought that Korvin Krukovskaya had rejected him 125 Political beliefs Edit In his youth Dostoevsky enjoyed reading Nikolai Karamzin s History of the Russian State which praised conservatism and Russian independence ideas that Dostoevsky would embrace later in life Before his arrest for participating in the Petrashevsky Circle in 1849 Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky 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 126 While critical of serfdom Dostoevsky was skeptical 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 127 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 127 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 127 In his incomplete article Socialism and Christianity Dostoevsky 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 126 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 Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky socialism was the latest incarnation of the Catholic idea and its natural ally 128 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 For all that to place Dostoevsky politically is not that simple but as a Christian he rejected atheistic socialism as a traditionalist he rejected the destruction of the institutions and as a pacifist he rejected any violent method or upheaval led by either progressives or reactionaries He supported private property and business rights and did not agree with many criticisms of the free market from the socialist utopians of his time 129 130 During the Russo Turkish War Dostoevsky 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 126 Ethnic beliefs EditMany characters in Dostoevsky s works including Jews have been described as displaying negative stereotypes 131 In an 1877 letter to Arkady Kovner a Jew who had accused Dostoevsky of antisemitism he replied with the following I am not an enemy of the Jews at all and never have been But as you say its 40 century existence proves that this tribe has exceptional vitality which would not help during the course of its history taking the form of various Status in Statu how can they fail to find themselves even if only partially at variance with the indigenous population the Russian tribe 132 Dostoevsky held to a Pan Slavic ideology that was conditioned by the Ottoman occupations of Eastern Europe In 1876 the Slavic populations of Serbia and Bulgaria rose up against their Ottoman overlords but the rebellion was put down In the process an estimated 12 000 people were killed In his diaries he scorned Westerners and those who were against the Pan Slavic movement This ideology was motivated in part by the desire to promote a common Orthodox Christian heritage which he saw as both unifying as well as a force for liberation 133 Religious beliefs Edit The New Testament that Dostoevsky took with him to prison in SiberiaDostoevsky was an Orthodox Christian 134 who was raised in a religious family and knew the Gospel from a very young age 135 He was influenced by the Russian translation of Johannes Hubner s One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories from the Old and New Testaments Selected for Children partly a German bible for children and partly a catechism 136 135 137 He attended Sunday liturgies from an early age and took part in annual pilgrimages to the St Sergius Trinity Monastery 138 A deacon at the hospital gave him religious instruction 137 Among his most cherished childhood memories were reciting prayers in front of guests and reading passages from the Book of Job that impressed him while still almost a child 139 According to an officer at the military academy Dostoevsky 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 140 Through the literature of Hoffmann Balzac Eugene Sue and Goethe Dostoevsky created his own belief system similar to Russian sectarianism and the Old Belief 140 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 141 In a January 1854 letter to the woman who had sent him the New Testament Dostoevsky 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 142 In Semipalatinsk Dostoevsky 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 Two pilgrimages and two works by Dmitri Rostovsky an archbishop who influenced Ukrainian and Russian literature by composing groundbreaking religious plays strengthened his beliefs 143 Through his visits to western Europe and discussions with Herzen Grigoriev and Strakhov Dostoevsky 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 144 Themes and style EditMain article Themes in Fyodor Dostoevsky s writings Manuscript of DemonsDostoevsky 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 145 Dostoevsky expressed religious psychological and philosophical ideas in his writings His works explore such themes as suicide poverty human manipulation and morality Psychological themes include dreaming first seen in White Nights 146 and the father son relationship beginning in The Adolescent 147 Most of his works demonstrate a vision of the chaotic sociopolitical structure of contemporary Russia 148 His early works viewed society for example the differences between poor and rich through the lens of literary realism and naturalism The influences of other writers particularly evident in his early works led to accusations of plagiarism 149 150 but his style gradually became more individual After his release from prison Dostoevsky incorporated religious themes especially those of Russian Orthodoxy into his writing Elements of gothic fiction 151 romanticism 152 and satire 153 are observable in some of his books He frequently used autobiographical or semi autobiographical details An important stylistic element in Dostoevsky s writing is polyphony the simultaneous presence of multiple narrative voices and perspectives 154 Kornelije Kvas wrote that Bakhtin s theory of the polyphonic novel and Dostoevsky s dialogicness of narration postulates the non existence of the final word which is why the thoughts emotions and experiences of the world of the narrator and his her characters are reflected through the words of another with which they can never fully blend 155 Legacy EditReception and influence Edit Dostoevsky monument in Dresden Germany Dostoevsky is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential novelists of the Golden Age of Russian literature 156 Leo Tolstoy admired some of Dostoevsky s works particularly The House of the Dead which he saw as exalted religious art inspired by deep faith and love of humanity 157 158 Albert Einstein called Dostoevsky a great religious writer who explores the mystery of spiritual existence 159 Sigmund Freud ranked Dostoevsky second only to Shakespeare as a creative writer 160 and called The Brothers Karamazov the most magnificent novel ever written 161 Friedrich Nietzsche called Dostoevsky the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn and described him as being among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life 162 163 The Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin s analysis of Dostoevsky came to be at the foundation of his theory of the novel Bakhtin argued that Dostoevsky s use of Polyphony was a major advancement in the development of the novel as a genre 154 In his posthumous collection of sketches A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway stated that in Dostoevsky 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 164 James Joyce praised Dostoevsky 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 165 In her essay The Russian Point of View Virginia Woolf said Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading 166 Franz Kafka called Dostoevsky his blood relative 167 and was heavily influenced by his works particularly The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment both of which profoundly influenced The Trial 168 Hermann Hesse enjoyed Dostoevsky s work and said that to read him is like a glimpse into the havoc 169 The Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun wrote that no one has analyzed the complicated human structure as Dostoyevsky His psychologic sense is overwhelming and visionary 170 In her essay What Is Romanticism Russian American author Ayn Rand wrote that Dostoevsky was one of the two greatest novelists the other being Victor Hugo 171 Writers associated with cultural movements such as surrealism existentialism and the Beats cite Dostoevsky as an influence 172 and he is regarded as a forerunner to Russian symbolism 173 expressionism 174 and psychoanalysis 175 J M Coetzee featured Dostoevsky as the protagonist in his 1997 novel The Master of Petersburg The famous Malayalam novel Oru Sankeerthanam Pole by Perumbadavam Sreedharan deals with the life of Dostoevsky and his love affair with Anna 176 Honours Edit Soviet Union stamp 1971In 1956 an olive green postage stamp dedicated to Dostoevsky was released in the Soviet Union with a print run of 1 000 copies 177 A Dostoevsky Museum was opened on 12 November 1971 in the apartment where he wrote his first and final novels 178 A crater on Mercury was named after him in 1979 and a minor planet discovered in 1981 by Lyudmila Karachkina was named 3453 Dostoevsky Music critic and broadcaster Artemy Troitsky has hosted the radio show FM Dostoevskij FM Dostoevsky since 1997 179 Viewers of the TV show Name of Russia voted him the ninth greatest Russian of all time just after Dmitry Mendeleev and just ahead of ruler Ivan IV 180 An Eagle Award winning TV series directed by Vladimir Khotinenko about Dostoevsky s life was screened in 2011 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 Dostoevsky s works such as controversial suicides 181 182 In 2021 Kazakhstan celebrated the 200th anniversary of Dostoyevsky s birth 183 Criticism Edit Dostoevsky s work did not always gain a positive reception Some 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 Nikolay Mikhaylovsky and others criticised his puppet like characters most prominently in The Idiot Demons The Possessed The Devils 184 and The Brothers Karamazov These characters were compared to those of Hoffmann an author whom Dostoevsky admired 185 Basing his estimation on stated criteria of enduring art and individual genius Nabokov judges Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky 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 cliche 186 The Scottish poet and critic Edwin Muir however addressed this criticism noting that regarding the oddness of Dostoevsky s characters it has been pointed out that they perhaps only seem pathological whereas in reality they are only visualized more clearly than any figures in imaginative literature 187 Reputation Edit Dostoevsky s books have been translated into more than 170 languages 188 The German translator Wilhelm Wolfsohn published one of the first translations parts of Poor Folk in an 1846 1847 magazine 189 and a French translation followed French German and Italian translations usually came directly from the original while English translations were second hand and of poor quality 190 The first English translations were by Marie von Thilo in 1881 but the first highly regarded ones were produced between 1912 and 1920 by Constance Garnett 191 Her flowing and easy translations helped popularise Dostoevsky s novels in anglophone countries and Bakhtin s Problems of Dostoevsky s Creative Art 1929 republished and revised as Problems of Dostoevsky s Poetics in 1963 provided further understanding of his style 192 Dostoevsky 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 Dostoevsky 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 193 According to critic Alexander Burry some of the most effective adaptions are Sergei Prokofiev s opera The Gambler Leos Janacek s opera From the House of the Dead Akira Kurosawa s film The Idiot and Andrzej Wajda s film The Possessed 194 After the 1917 Russian Revolution passages of Dostoevsky books were sometimes shortened although only two books were censored Demons 195 and Diary of a Writer 196 His philosophy particularly in Demons was deemed anti capitalist but also anti Communist and reactionary 197 198 According to historian Boris Ilizarov Stalin read Dostoevsky s The Brothers Karamazov several times 199 Works EditDostoevsky s works of fiction include 16 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 Edit Poor Folk Edit Main article Poor Folk Poor Folk is an epistolary novel that depicts 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 Dostoevsky shows how poverty and dependence are indissolubly aligned with deflection and deformation of self esteem combining inward and outward suffering 200 Notes from Underground Edit 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 emphasises 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 Dostoevsky 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 201 202 Crime and Punishment Edit Main article Crime and Punishment The novel Crime and Punishment has received both critical and popular acclaim It remains one of the most influential and widely read novels in Russian literature 203 and has been sometimes described as Dostoevsky s magnum opus 204 Crime and Punishment follows the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov an impoverished ex student in Saint Petersburg who plans to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker an old woman who stores money and valuable objects in her flat He theorises that with the money he could liberate himself from poverty and go on to perform great deeds and seeks to convince himself that certain crimes are justifiable if they are committed in order to remove obstacles to the higher goals of extraordinary men Once the deed is done however he finds himself racked with confusion paranoia and disgust His theoretical justifications lose all their power as he struggles with guilt and horror and confronts both the internal and external consequences of his deed Strakhov remarked that Only Crime and Punishment was read in 1866 and that Dostoevsky had managed to portray a Russian person aptly and realistically 205 In contrast 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 206 The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes Crime and Punishment as a masterpiece and one of the finest studies of the psychopathology of guilt written in any language 207 The Idiot Edit Main article The Idiot The title is an ironic reference to the central character of the novel Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin a young man whose goodness open hearted simplicity and guilelessness lead many of the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight In the character of Prince Myshkin Dostoevsky set himself the task of depicting the positively good and beautiful man 208 The novel examines the consequences of placing such a singular individual at the centre of the conflicts desires passions and egoism of worldly society both for the man himself and for those with whom he becomes involved Joseph Frank describes The Idiot as the most personal of all Dostoevsky s major works the book in which he embodies his most intimate cherished and sacred convictions 209 It includes descriptions of some of his most intense personal ordeals such as epilepsy and mock execution and explores moral spiritual and philosophical themes consequent upon them His primary motivation in writing the novel was to subject his own highest ideal that of true Christian love to the crucible of contemporary Russian society Demons Edit Main article Demons Dostoevsky novel Demons is a social and political satire a psychological drama and large scale tragedy Joyce Carol Oates has described it as Dostoevsky s most confused and violent novel and his most satisfactorily tragic work 210 According to Ronald Hingley it is Dostoevsky s greatest onslaught on Nihilism and one of humanity s most impressive achievements perhaps even its supreme achievement in the art of prose fiction 211 Demons is an allegory of the potentially catastrophic consequences of the political and moral nihilism that were becoming prevalent in Russia in the 1860s 212 A fictional town descends into chaos as it becomes the focal point of an attempted revolution orchestrated by master conspirator Pyotr Verkhovensky The mysterious aristocratic figure of Nikolai Stavrogin Verkhovensky s counterpart in the moral sphere dominates the book exercising an extraordinary influence over the hearts and minds of almost all the other characters The idealistic Western influenced generation of the 1840s epitomized in the character of Stepan Verkhovensky who is both Pyotr Verkhovensky s father and Nikolai Stavrogin s childhood teacher are presented as the unconscious progenitors and helpless accomplices of the demonic forces that take possession of the town The Brothers Karamazov Edit Main article The Brothers Karamazov At nearly 800 pages The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky s largest work It received both critical and popular acclaim and is often cited as his magnum opus 213 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 214 215 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 Dostoevsky 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 216 214 215 Sigmund Freud wrote an essay called Dostoevsky and Parricide German Dostojewski und die Vatertotung as an introductory article to a scholarly collection on the The Brothers Karamazov Bibliography Edit Main article Fyodor Dostoevsky bibliography Novels and novellas Edit 1846 Poor Folk 1846 The Double 1847 The Landlady novella 1849 Netochka Nezvanova unfinished 1859 Uncle s Dream novella 1859 The Village of Stepanchikovo 1861 Humiliated and Insulted 1862 The House of the Dead 1864 Notes from Underground novella 1866 Crime and Punishment 1867 The Gambler 1869 The Idiot 1870 The Eternal Husband 1872 Demons also titled The Possessed The Devils 184 1875 The Adolescent 1880 The Brothers Karamazov Short stories Edit 1846 Mr Prokharchin 1847 Novel in Nine Letters 1848 Another Man s Wife and a Husband Under the Bed merger of Another Man s Wife and A Jealous Husband 1848 A Weak Heart 1848 Polzunkov 1848 An Honest Thief 1848 A Christmas Tree and a Wedding 1848 White Nights 1849 A Little Hero 1862 A Nasty Story 1865 The Crocodile 1873 Bobok 1876 The Heavenly Christmas Tree also titled The Beggar Boy at Christ s Christmas Tree 217 1876 A Gentle Creature also titled The Meek One 1876 The Peasant Marey 1877 The Dream of a Ridiculous Man Essay collections Edit Winter Notes on Summer Impressions 1863 A Writer s Diary 1873 1881 Translations Edit 1843 Eugenie Grandet Honore de Balzac 1843 La derniere Aldini George Sand 1843 Mary Stuart Friedrich Schiller Personal letters Edit 1912 Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to His Family and Friends by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky Author translator Ethel Colburn Mayne Kessinger Publishing LLC 26 May 2006 ISBN 978 1 4286 1333 1Posthumously published notebooks Edit 1922 Stavrogin s Confession amp the Plan of the Life of a Great Sinner English translation by Virginia Woolf and S S KotelianskyReferences EditNotes Edit His name has been variously transcribed into English his first name sometimes being rendered as Theodore or Fedor Before the postrevolutionary orthographic reform which among other things replaced the Cyrillic letter Ѳ with F Dostoevsky s name was written Ѳedor Mihajlovich Dostoevskij In Old Style dates 30 October 1821 28 January 1881 Time magazine was a popular periodical with more than 4 000 subscribers before it was closed on 24 May 1863 by the Tsarist Regime after publishing an essay by Nikolay Strakhov about the Polish revolt in Russia Vremya and its 1864 successor Epokha expressed the philosophy of the conservative and Slavophile movement Pochvennichestvo supported by Dostoevsky during his term of imprisonment and in the following years 64 Another reason for his abstinence might have been the closure of casinos in Germany in 1872 and 1873 it was not until the rise of Adolf Hitler that they were reopened 84 or his entering a synagogue that he confused with a gambling hall According to biographer Joseph Frank Dostoevsky took that as a sign not to gamble any more 85 The haemorrhage could also have been triggered by heated disputes with his sister Vera about his aunt Aleksandra Kumanina s estate which was settled on 30 March and discussed in the St Petersburg City Court on 24 July 1879 108 109 Anna later acquired a part of his estate consisting of around 185 desiatina around 500 acres or 202 ha of forest and 92 desiatina of farmland 110 Citations Edit Jones Daniel 2011 Roach Peter Setter Jane Esling John eds Dostoievski Dostoevsky Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary 18th ed Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 15255 6 Dostoevsky Random House Webster s Unabridged Dictionary Fyodor Dostoyevsky at the Encyclopaedia Britannica Scanlan 2002 Leigh David J 2010 The Philosophy and Theology of Fyodor Dostoevsky Ultimate Reality and Meaning 33 1 2 85 103 doi 10 3138 uram 33 1 2 85 Morson Gary Saul Fyodor Dostoyevsky Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc Retrieved 12 September 2015 Dominique Arban Dostoievski Seuil 1995 p 5 a b Kjetsaa 1989 pp 1 5 a b Frank 1979 pp 6 22 Kjetsaa 1989 p 11 Terras Victor 1985 Handbook of Russian Literature Yale University Press p 102 ISBN 978 0 300 04868 1 Bloom 2004 p 9 a b Breger 2008 p 72 Leatherbarrow 2002 p 23 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 6 11 a b Frank 1979 pp 23 54 Natural School Naturalnaya shkola Brief Literary Encyclopedia in 9 Volumes Moscow 1968 Retrieved 1 December 2013 Mochulsky 1967 p 4 Lantz 2004 p 61 Ruttenburg Nancy 4 January 2010 Dostoevsky s Democracy Princeton University Press pp 76 77 Kjetsaa 1989 p 6 Kjetsaa 1989 p 39 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 14 15 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 17 23 Frank 1979 pp 69 90 Lantz 2004 p 2 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 24 7 a b c Frank 1979 pp 69 111 Sekirin 1997 p 59 Reik Theodor 1940 The Study on Dostoyevsky In From Thirty Years with Freud Farrar amp Rhinehart Inc pp 158 76 Lantz 2004 p 109 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 31 36 Frank 1979 pp 114 15 Breger 2008 p 104 Grossman Leonid 2011 Dostoevskij Dostoevsky in Russian AST p 536 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 36 37 Sekirin 1997 p 73 Frank 1979 pp 113 57 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 42 49 Frank 1979 pp 159 82 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 53 55 Mochulsky 1967 pp 115 21 Kjetsaa 1989 p 59 Frank 1979 pp 239 46 259 346 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 58 69 Frank Joseph 2010 Dostoevsky A Writer in His Time pp 152 158 ISBN 9780691128191 Mochulsky 1967 pp 99 101 Belinsky Vissarion 1847 Letter to Gogol Documents in Russian History Seton Hall University Retrieved 27 December 2017 Mochulsky 1967 pp 121 33 a b Frank 1987 pp 6 68 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 72 79 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 79 96 Sekirin 1997 p 113 Pisma I pp 135 37 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 96 108 Frank 1988 pp 8 20 Sekirin 1997 pp 107 21 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 112 13 Frank 1987 pp 165 267 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 108 13 a b Sekirin 1997 p 168 Frank 1987 pp 175 221 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 115 63 Frank 1988 pp 34 64 Frank 1987 pp 290 et seq Frank 1988 pp 8 62 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 135 37 Frank 1988 pp 233 49 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 143 45 Frank 1988 pp 197 211 283 94 248 365 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 151 75 Frank 2009 p 462 Leatherbarrow 2002 p 83 Frank 1997 pp 42 183 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 162 96 Sekirin 1997 p 178 Moss Walter G 2002 Russia in the Age of Alexander II Tolstoy and Dostoevsky Anthem Press pp 128 33 ISBN 978 0 85728 763 2 Andrew Kaufman 31 August 2021 The Gambler Wife A True Story of Love Risk and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky Riverhead Books ISBN 0 525 53714 7 OL 34129769M Wikidata Q109057625 Fiodor Dostojewski biografia wiersze utwory poezja org in Polish Retrieved 18 June 2022 Kjetsaa 1989 p 219 Kathari Suzanne Riliet Natalie 2009 Histoire et Guide des cimetieres genevois in French Geneva Editions Slatkine pp 110 222 227 ISBN 978 2 8321 0372 2 Frank 1997 pp 151 363 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 201 37 Kjetsaa 1989 p 245 Frank 2003 p 639 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 240 61 Frank 1997 pp 241 363 Kjetsaa 1989 p 265 a b Frank 2003 pp 14 63 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 265 67 Nasedkin Nikolay Vokrug Dostoevskogo Around Dostoyevsky The Dostoyevsky Encyclopedia in Russian Archived from the original on 2 May 2013 Retrieved 5 November 2017 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 268 71 Frank 2003 pp 38 118 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 269 89 Frank 2003 pp 120 47 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 273 95 Frank 2003 pp 149 97 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 273 302 Frank 2003 pp 199 280 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 303 06 Frank 2003 pp 320 75 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 307 49 Sekirin 1997 p 255 Lantz 2004 p 170 Lantz 2004 pp 230 31 Frank 2003 pp 475 531 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 353 63 Sekirin 1997 pp 309 16 Lantz 2004 p xxxiii Lantz 2004 p 223 a b Frank 2003 pp 707 50 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 368 71 Joseph Frank Dostoevsky A Writer in His Time Princeton University Press 2010 p 925 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 371 72 Mikhailova Valeriya 6 March 2017 To be the wife of Fyodor Dostoevsky part 4 Bloggers Karamazov Dostoevsky in Petersburg F M Dostoevsky Literary Memorial Museum Archived from the original on 25 March 2016 Retrieved 5 November 2017 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 373 et seqq Kjetsaa 1989 p 50 Payne Robert Dostoyevsky A Human Portrait Knopf 1961 p 51 OCLC 609509729 Sekirin 1997 p 299 Frank 1988 pp 18 19 Mochulsky 1967 pp 183 84 Frank 2009 pp 445 46 Lantz 2004 pp 45 46 Sekirin 1997 p 169 a b c Lantz 2004 pp 183 89 a b c Lantz 2004 pp 323 27 Lantz 2004 p 185 Dostoevsky Fyodor 20 July 1997 A Writer s Diary Northwestern University Press ISBN 9780810115163 Retrieved 3 July 2019 Ward Bruce K 30 October 2010 Dostoyevsky s Critique of the West The Quest for the Earthly Paradise ISBN 9781554588169 Retrieved 3 July 2019 Eberstadt Fernanda 1987 Dostoevsky and the Jews Commentary Magazine Frank Joseph Goldstein David I 1989 Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoevsky Rutgers pp 437 38 dakaras The Diary Of A Writer Free Download Borrow and Streaming Internet Archive Retrieved 26 January 2022 Pattison George Thompson Diane Oenning eds 2001 Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature Cambridge University Press p 135 ISBN 978 0 521 78278 4 a b Frank 1979 p 401 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 8 9 a b Jones 2005 p 1 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 7 9 Frank 2009 pp 24 30 a b Jones 2005 p 2 Jones 2005 p 6 Jones 2005 p 7 Frank 1979 pp 22 23 Jones 2005 pp 7 9 Dostoevskij Fedor Mihajlovich Stihotvoreniya Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky Poems in Russian Lib ru Retrieved 5 November 2017 Frank 2009 p 110 Catteau Jacques 1989 Dostoyevsky and the Process of Literary Creation Cambridge University Press p 282 ISBN 978 0 521 32436 6 Terras 1998 p 59 Terras 1998 p 14 Bloshteyn 2007 p 3 Lantz 2004 pp 167 70 Lantz 2004 pp 361 64 Scanlan 2002 p 59 a b Bakhtin M M 1984 Problems of Dostoevsky s Poetics Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press Kvas Kornelije 2019 The Boundaries of Realism in World Literature Lanham Boulder New York London Lexington Books p 101 ISBN 978 1 7936 0910 6 Lauer 2000 p 364 Frank Joseph 2010 p 369 Aimee Dostoyevskaya 1921 Fyodor Dostoyevsky A Study Honolulu Hawaii University Press of the Pacific p https books google es books id n7fb7eH6nRUC amp pg PA218 amp q dostoyevsky 20admired 20tolstoy p 218 Vucinich Alexander 2001 Einstein and Soviet Ideology p 181 Bibcode 2002PhT 55i 59V doi 10 1063 1 1522218 ISBN 978 0 8047 4209 2 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a journal ignored help Freud Sigmund 1961 The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud The Hogarth Press p 177 Rieff Philip 1979 Freud the Mind of the Moralist 3rd ed University of Chicago Press p 132 ISBN 978 0 226 71639 8 Muller 1982 p 7 See KSA 13 14 222 and 15 9 Dahiya Bhim S 1992 Hemingway s A Farewell To Arms a Critical Study Academic Foundation p 15 ISBN 978 81 269 0772 4 Power Arthur Joyce James 1999 Conversations with James Joyce University of Toronto pp 51 60 ISBN 978 1 901866 41 4 Archived from the original on 12 September 2004 Woolf Virginia 1984 Chapter 16 The Russian Point of View The Common Reader Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN 978 0 15 602778 6 Bridgwater Patrick 2003 Kafka Gothic and Fairytale Rodopi p 9 ISBN 978 90 420 1194 6 Struc Roman S 1981 Written at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Kafka and Dostoevsky as Blood Relatives Dostoevsky Studies Austria 2 111 17 OCLC 7475685 via University of Toronto Muller 1982 p 8 Lavrin 1947 p 161 Rand Ayn The Romantic Manifesto Bloshteyn 2007 p 5 Lavrin 2005 p 38 Burry 2011 p 57 Breger 2008 p 270 Oru Sankeerthanam Pole goes into 100th edition The New Indian Express No 26 November 2017 Russian Postage Stamps of 1956 1960 Soyuzpechat ru Retrieved 5 November 2017 Museum F M Dostoevsky Literary Memorial Museum Archived from the original on 17 January 2008 Retrieved 5 November 2017 Radio FINAM FM 99 6 in Russian FINAM Retrieved 20 April 2013 Rezultaty Internet golosovaniya Internet voting results in Russian Name of Russia Archived from the original on 27 August 2017 Retrieved 5 November 2017 Liublinsko Dmitrovskaya Line Moscow Metro Archived from the original on 10 March 2012 A Dark View Of Dostoevsky On The Moscow Subway NPR org 9 August 2010 Retrieved 25 November 2020 November 2021 Dmitry Babich in Society on 10 10 November 2021 Dostoyevsky s 200th Anniversary Celebrated in Kazakhstan the Land of His Formative Years The Astana Times Retrieved 10 November 2021 a b The 1872 novel Demons Russian Besy Besy by Fyodor Dostoevsky is sometimes also titled The Possessed or The Devils Terras 1998 pp 3 4 Nabokov Vladamir 1981 Lectures on Russian Literature Harvest Book Harcourt pp 97 135 ISBN 978 0 15 602776 2 Murr Edwin DER 99 Kjetsaa 1989 p foreword Meier Grafe 1988 p 492 Bloshteyn 2007 p 26 Jones amp Terry 2010 p 216 France Peter 2001 The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation Oxford University Press pp 594 98 ISBN 978 0 19 818359 4 Burry 2011 p 3 Burry 2011 p 5 D Z Forbidden Books of Russian Writers and Literary Scientists 1917 1991 Archived from the original on 29 July 2017 Retrieved 31 August 2013 3 3 Knigi ob otdelnyh pisatelyah Forbidden Books of Russian Writers and Literary Scientists 1917 1991 Archived from the original on 20 February 2018 Retrieved 31 August 2013 Bloshteyn 2007 pp 7 8 Lenin read Dostoevsky in a more nuanced way than others describing Demons 1871 72 as repulsive but great Geoff Waite with Francesca Cernia Slovin Nietzsche with Dostoevsky Unrequited Collaborators in Crime without Punishment in Jeff Love and Jeffrey Metzger eds Nietzsche and Dostoevsky Philosophy Morality Tragedy Chicago Northwestern University Press 2016 ISBN 0810133962 For a summary of the Soviet reception of Dostoevsky see Vladimir Shlapentokh Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power The Post Stalin Era Princeton Univ Press 1990 94 Vladimir Bushin Vranyo ot yunogo papuasa Fids from a young Papuan Pravda in Russian Archived from the original on 29 October 2013 Kjetsaa 1989 pp 69 103 Halliwell Martin 2006 Transatlantic Modernism Moral Dilemmas in Modernist Fiction Edinburgh University Press p 13 ISBN 978 0 7486 2393 8 Eysteinsson Astradur 1990 The Concept of Modernism Cornell University Press p 29 ISBN 978 0 8014 8077 5 Greatest Russian Novels of All Time Retrieved 21 July 2020 Arntfield Michael 2017 Murder in Plain English New York Prometheus p 42 ISBN 9781633882546 Kjetsaa 1989 p 183 Frank 1997 p 45 60 182 Cregan Reid Vybarr Crime and Punishment Retrieved 21 July 2020 Dostoevsky letter quoted in Peace Richard 1971 Dostoyevsky An Examination of the Major Novels Cambridge University Press pp 59 63 ISBN 0 521 07911 X Frank Joseph 2010 Dostoevsky A Writer in His Time Princeton University Press p 577 ISBN 9780691128191 Joyce Carol Oates Tragic Rites In Dostoevsky s The Possessed p 3 Hingley Ronald 1978 Dostoyevsky His Life and Work London Paul Elek Limited pp 158 59 ISBN 0 236 40121 1 Peter Rollberg 2014 Mastermind Terrorist Enigma Dostoevsky s Nikolai Stavrogin Perspectives on Political Science 43 3 143 152 Frank 2003 pp 390 441 a b Frank 1997 pp 567 705 a b Kjetsaa 1989 pp 337 414 Muller 1982 pp 91 103 Dostoyefsky F M A Beggar Boy at Christ s Christmas Tree in Little Russian Masterpieces Zenaide A Ragozin Ed Trans New York G P Putnam s Sons 1920 p 172 Bibliography Edit Bercken Wil van den 2011 Christian Fiction and Religious Realism in the Novels of Dostoevsky Anthem Press ISBN 978 0 85728 976 6 Bloshteyn Maria R 2007 The Making of a Counter Culture Icon Henry Miller s Dostoevsky University of Toronto Press ISBN 978 0 8020 9228 1 Breger Louis 2008 Dostoevsky The Author As Psychoanalyst Transaction Publishers ISBN 978 1 4128 0843 9 Burry Alexander 2011 Multi Mediated Dostoevsky Transposing Novels Into Opera Film and Drama Northwestern University Press ISBN 978 0 8101 2715 9 Cassedy Steven 2005 Dostoevsky s Religion Stanford University Press ISBN 978 0 8047 5137 7 Cicovacki Predrag 2012 Dostoevsky and the Affirmation of Life Transaction Publishers ISBN 978 1 4128 4606 6 Frank Joseph 1981 Foreword In Goldstein David ed Dostoevsky and the Jews University of Texas Press ISBN 978 0 292 71528 8 Jones Malcolm V 2005 Dostoevsky And the Dynamics of Religious Experience Anthem Press ISBN 978 1 84331 205 5 Jones Malcolm V Terry Garth M 2010 New Essays on Dostoyevsky Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 15531 1 Lantz Kenneth A 2004 The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia Greenwood Publishing Group ISBN 978 0 313 30384 5 Lauer Reinhard 2000 Geschichte der Russischen Literatur von 1700 bis zur Gegenwart in German Verlag C H Beck ISBN 978 3 406 50267 5 Lavrin Janko 2005 Dostoevsky A Study Kessinger Publishing ISBN 978 1 4179 8844 0 Leatherbarrow William J 2002 The Cambridge Companion to Dostoevskii Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 65473 9 Maurina Zenta 1940 A Prophet of the Soul Fyodor Dostoievsky Translated by C P Finlayson James Clarke amp Co Ltd Meier Grafe Julius 1988 1926 Dostojewski der Dichter in German Insel Verlag ISBN 978 3 458 32799 8 Mochulsky Konstantin 1967 1967 Dostoevsky His Life and Work Minihan Michael A translator Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 01299 5 Muller Ludolf 1982 Dostojewskij Sein Leben Sein Werk Sein Vermachtnis in German Erich Wewel Verlag ISBN 978 3 87904 100 8 Paperno Irina 1997 Suicide as a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky s Russia Cornell University Press ISBN 978 0 8014 8425 4 Pattison George Thompson Diane Oenning 2001 Dostoevsky and the Christian tradition Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 78278 4 Popovic Justin 2007 Filosofiya i religiya Dostoevskogo Philosophical and Religious Beliefs of Dostoyevsky in Russian ISBN 978 985 90125 1 8 Scanlan James Patrick 2002 Dostoevsky the Thinker A Philosophical Study Cornell University Press ISBN 978 0 8014 3994 0 Sekirin Peter ed 1997 The Dostoevsky Archive Firsthand Accounts of the Novelist from Contemporaries Memoirs and Rare Periodicals Most Translated Into English for the First Time with a Detailed Lifetime Chronology and Annotated Bibliography McFarland ISBN 978 0 7864 0264 9 Terras Victor 1998 Reading Dostoevsky University of Wisconsin Press ISBN 978 0 299 16054 8 BiographiesBloom Harold 2004 Fyodor Dostoevsky Infobase Publishing ISBN 978 0 7910 8117 4 Frank Joseph 2009 Dostoevsky A Writer in His Time Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 12819 1 Frank Joseph 1979 1976 Dostoevsky The Seeds of Revolt 1821 1849 Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 01355 8 Frank Joseph 1987 1983 Dostoevsky The Years of Ordeal 1850 1859 Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 01422 7 Frank Joseph 1988 1986 Dostoevsky The Stir of Liberation 1860 1865 Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 01452 4 Frank Joseph 1997 1995 Dostoevsky The Miraculous Years 1865 1871 Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 01587 3 Frank Joseph 2003 2002 Dostoevsky The Mantle of the Prophet 1871 1881 Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 11569 6 Kjetsaa Geir 1989 Fyodor Dostoyevsky A Writer s Life Fawcett Columbine ISBN 978 0 449 90334 6 Lavrin Janko 1947 Dostoevsky New York The Macmillan Company OCLC 646160256 Further reading EditAllen James Sloan 2008 Condemned to Be Free Worldly Wisdom Great Books and the Meanings of Life Savannah Frederic C Beil ISBN 978 1 929490 35 6 Birmingham Kevin 2021 The sinner and the saint Dostoevsky and the gentleman murderer who inspired a masterpiece New York Penguin Berdyaev Nicolas 1948 The Russian Idea The Macmillan Company Bierbaum Otto Julius 1910 1911 Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche The Hibbert Journal Vol IX Hubben William 1997 Dostoevsky Kierkegaard Nietzsche and Kafka Four Prophets of Our Destiny Simon amp Schuster Originally published in 1952 Lavrin Janko 1918 Dostoyevsky and Certain of his Problems Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII Part IX Part X The New Age Vol XXII Nos 12 21 Lavrin Janko 1918 The Dostoyevsky Problem The New Age Vol XXII No 24 pp 465 66 Maeztu Ramiro de 1918 Dostoyevsky the Manichean The New Age Vol XXII No 23 1918 pp 449 51 Manning Clarence Augustus 1922 Dostoyevsky and Modern Russian Literature The Sewanee Review Vol 30 No 3 Seccombe Thomas 1911 Dostoievsky Feodor Mikhailovich In Chisholm Hugh ed Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 8 11th ed Cambridge University Press pp 438 439 Simmons Ernest J 1940 Dostoevsky The Making Of A Novelist Vintage Books Westbrook Perry D 1961 The Greatness of Man An Essay on Dostoyevsky and Whitman New York Thomas Yoseloff External links EditFyodor Dostoevsky at Wikipedia s sister projects Media from Commons Quotations from Wikiquote Texts from Wikisource Data from Wikidata Digital collections Works by Fyodor Dostoevsky in eBook form at Standard Ebooks Works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Fyodor Dostoevsky at Internet Archive Works by Fyodor Dostoevsky at LibriVox public domain audiobooks Fyodor Dostoyevsky collection at One More Library The complete works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky in Russian the online published bibliography in its original languageScholarly works International Dostoevsky Society a network of scholars dedicated to studying the life and works of Fyodor Dostoevsky FyodorDostoevsky com discussion forums essays quotes photos biography of the author Archives of Dostoevsky Studies ISSN 1013 2309 a journal published from 1980 to 1988Other links Dostoevsky s family tree Fyodor Dostoevsky at the Internet Book List Dostoevsky Fyodor 8 June 2016 A Novel in Nine Letters a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a website ignored help Also available in the original Russian Archived 15 April 2018 at the Wayback Machine Dostoevsky Fyodor 4 March 2017 The Dream of a Ridiculous Man Archived from the original on 15 April 2018 Retrieved 15 April 2018 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a website ignored help Newspaper clippings about Fyodor Dostoevsky in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW Places of Fyodor Dostoevsky in Saint Petersburg Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Fyodor Dostoevsky amp oldid 1170541352, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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