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Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky was born in Moscow, as the second son of a former army doctor. He was educated at home and at a private school. Shortly after the death of his mother in 1837 he was sent to St. Petersburg, where he entered the Army Engineering College. In 1839 Dostoevsky's father died probably of apoplexy but there were strong rumors that he was murdered by his own serfs. Dostoevsky graduated as a military engineer, but resigned in 1844 to devote himself to writing. His first novel, Poor Folk appeared in 1846. It was followed by The Double, which depicted a man who was haunted by a look-alike who eventually usurps his position.
In 1846 he joined a group of utopian socialists. He was arrested in 1849 and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to imprisonment in Siberia. Dostoevsky spent four years in hard labor and four years as a soldier in Semipalatinsk.
Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg in 1854 as a writer with a religious mission and published three works that derive in different ways from his Siberia experiences: The House of the Dead, (1860) a fictional account of prison life, The Insulted and Injured, which reflects the author's refutation of naive Utopianism in the face of evil, and Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, his account of a trip to Western Europe.
In 1857 Dostoevsky married Maria Isaev, a 29-year old widow. He resigned from the army two years later. Between the years 1861 and 1863 he served as editor of the monthly periodical Time, which was later suppressed because of an article on the Polish uprising.
In 1864-65 his wife and brother died and he was burdened with debts, and his situation was made even worse by gambling. From the turmoil of the 1860s emerged Notes from the Underground, psychological study of an outsider, which marked a watershed in Dostoevsky's artistic development. The novel starts with the confessions of a mentally ill narrator and continues with the promise of spiritual rebirth. It was followed by Crime and Punishment, (1866) an account of an individual's fall and redemption, The Idiot, (1868) depicting a Christ-like figure, Prince Myshkin, and The Possessed, (1871) an exploration of philosophical nihilism.
In 1867 Dostoevsky married Anna Snitkin, his 22-year old stenographer, who seems to have understood her husband's manias and rages. They traveled abroad and returned in 1871. By the time of The Brothers Karamazov, which appeared in 1879-80, Dostoevsky was recognized in his own country as one of its great writers.
An epileptic all his life, Dostoevsky died in St. Petersburg on February 9, 1881. He was buried in the Aleksandr Nevsky monastery, St. Petersburg.
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Dostoevsky and beauty
One thing i remember noticing in Dostoevsky's work is that he appears to have at the same time a pre-occupation with beauty, and also one which is not analysed at all. Some examples of beauty playing a part in his characters: Raskolnicov is described as very beautiful. I always thought that he made it that way so as to have the readers avoid some explanation of his misery by means of frustration with women. In the "pitiful tale" there is a character who is almost only described as "very good looking boy". He acts in an angelic way. The narrator of The Underground introduces himself by claiming he is repulsive (i trust physically as well as ethically). In the vast ocean of his work such a theme perhaps can go utterly un-noticed. It has been years since i read most of it, but there are other characters who are physically ugly, such as Marmeladov, and they get diminished to the point of being treated like animals. Also i do not recall any clear passage of adoration of beauty. Unlike in Tolstoi's work, were the human form is often mentioned and adored, or even if it isnt then there is some very clear occupation in the story about this. In Dostoevsky it seems that the form has some hidden meaning, perhaps some meaning he didnt feel comfortable with. This could be one of the motifs in his work, perhaps not as pronounced as others, but still existant :)
Posted By Kyriakos at Tue 29 Jun 2010, 5:40 PM in Dostoevsky, Fyodor || 1 Reply
Non Volokhonsky/Pevear translations?
The couple have translated 9 novels * The Brothers Karamazov (1990) * Crime and Punishment (1992) * Notes from Underground (1993) * Demons (1994) * The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (1997) * The Idiot (2002) * The Adolescent (2003) * The Double (2005) * The Gambler (2005) But what about the 6 novels the pair haven't translated, can anyone assist me with recommendations for the best English translations for the following 6 Dostoevsky novels (if there is a English translation available)? 1846 Poor Folk (also called Poor People) short novel 1849 Netochka Nezvanovna medium novel 1859 The Uncle's Dream short novel 1859 The Village of Stepanchikovo (also called The Friend of the Family) medium novel 1861 The Insulted and the Injured (also called The Insulted and Humiliated, The Humiliated and Wronged) medium novel 1862 House of the Dead (also called Notes From the House of the Dead) medium novel Much appreciated thanks!
Posted By DonovanTalbot at Thu 10 Jun 2010, 5:44 PM in Dostoevsky, Fyodor || 1 Reply
The Eternal Husband
What are we to make of the ending of this novella? The Eternal Husband, a late work of Dostoevsky, alludes to an affair a decade earlier between Velchaninov and a married woman, the siren Natalia, and the subsequent relationship between the man and her husband, Pavel Pavlovich, who knowingly has brought along 'his' young daughter, Liza, almost certainly a product of the affair. Every scene starts with Velchaninov, and none ends before he and Pavel Pavlovich interact. We tend to see the action though Velchaninov's eyes, but Pavel Pavlovich viewpoint is perhaps the more fascinating. Towards the end, can we assume that Pavel Pavlovich, having returned Liza to her genetic father, is intending to murder the man who has cuckolded him? I assume that Velchaninov is right to bind and eject him for good. But both men seem to have an unhealthy fascination for each other, combined with a curious mix of shame, guilt and pride. Ultimately, their lives seem bizarrely twisted.
Posted By Gladys at Wed 7 Apr 2010, 4:47 AM in Dostoevsky, Fyodor || 2 Replies
Best Book- in your opinion, of course
I finished reading Crime and Punishment a few months ago, and I really liked it. Maybe because the main character was the perfect portrayal of someone who is somewhat crazy and incredibly sad(I know, he acted just like my dad). Maybe because poor people are exemplified. Maybe because I could relate a little bit to the plot. Maybe because many of the characters(Porfiry, Raskolnikov, Sonya, Marmelodov, Svidrigailov) were very interesting to me. Maybe just because it was a good book. So anyway, I want to know what is considered Dostoyevsky's greatest work, so that I don't read it yet. I don't want to read it because I think it must be the greatest work in all of literature, and I don't want to be like a crack addict, always looking for that same high that I got the first time when I was younger, never quite getting what I'm looking for. I want to wait to read it until I'm much older
Posted By Oniw17 at Tue 30 Mar 2010, 9:09 AM in Dostoevsky, Fyodor || 4 Replies
My Island; Crime & Punishment vs. Brothers Karamazov
A wee bit of a confessional here folks. I was more moved by C&P than BK. There, I've said it. Hardly the most intimate of feelings, yet I do feel as if I've been stranded on a bit of an island for the aforementioned opinion. Perhaps defining 'moved' would be apropos. C&P is hardly uplifting, yet I'd be remiss to not extol its visceral virtues. I've never felt such sheer intensely for the written word as I have than when I'd been tugged inside the tormented mind of Raskolnikov. His narrowed world was such a dizzying, unrelenting one, and one of the least pleasurable ones to boot. While literature at its finest can be provocative and pleasurable, the frenetic tone & depth to this story blew through any normative criteria I may have used to judge a wor & I'm left w/ nothing but Dostoevsky's guts...cloaked in an everlasting, surrendering tide, bound by an intimate connection to darkness. That said, my bias may lay in my lack of fascination w/ theology- which is one of the firmest of legs that BK stands on. The Grand Inquisitor chapter was the most powerful moment during the work, yet I couldn't ride its wave long enough to transcend my ultimate synopsis of 'pretty damn good, but those expectations I'd had really may have damned this for me.' Perhaps that is the story, one of a sky high ceiling which was impossible to reach...but in actuality, the strength of the book, lying in Alyosha's intangibles, may have simply been too tough for me to swallow. Not to say Ivan's argument was a more compelling one (albeit a more unique vision, intellectually divorced from the soul), his presence just left me wanting...I missed the deep seeded feeling that Dostoevsky jack-hammered me w/ in C&P. There were moments in BK, particularly Ivan's downward spiraling dance w/ the devil, along w/ some of the bits of the raw, familial life that the Russian Proletariats of the time were shelled with...but those moments, for me, didn't smack w/ that prevailing, indomitable wind that C&P did. Who knows if this is a criticism on BK, an homage to C&P, or simply my unveiling of subjective drivers that get my literary goat...but for now, I'll call it a confessional. For these few reasons and several more, C&P moved me, for better or for worse, more than BK. Am I the only one?
Posted By Brad Coelho at Tue 23 Feb 2010, 6:37 PM in Dostoevsky, Fyodor || 5 Replies
Female Charecters in Crime and Punishment
How would i show that the female characters in C&P are not trodden personalities but strong characters? this refers mostly to the main charecters, like Dunya and Sonya. even nastasya might work. thanks
Posted By Gustav at Sat 5 Dec 2009, 6:29 PM in Dostoevsky, Fyodor || 1 Reply
"[He is] the only psychologist from which I have anything to learn."
I know this quote is Nietzsche's, but can anyone tell me where I can find this quote in his writing? Does anyone know the source?
Posted By Dori at Fri 20 Nov 2009, 1:52 PM in Dostoevsky, Fyodor || 2 Replies
Was Dostoevsky an Atheist?
I am reading Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. This is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. First I got started with a bit difficulty in understanding the book. Later on I found the book profoundly captivating. But I got stuck by two questions in the course of writing. • Given some characters like the Elder and Alyosha I thought that Dostoevsky had a liking to religion, God and the idea of immortality. • As the reading followed the book had a different impression on me and I felt that Dostoevsky was a nonbeliever It is really hard to say conclusively given the so many characters all having their own ideas presented in such a logical and philosophical manner whether he was a theist or atheist in point of fact. I hope may on this forum have gone through the book and had presented critical essays / reviews on the book. Among the books I have read lately this book stands out in terms of the multiplicity of characters, themes and the philosophies. I hope my skepticisms will be clear with your views
Posted By blazeofglory at Sun 25 Oct 2009, 9:49 PM in Dostoevsky, Fyodor || 28 Replies
Liberal Atheists and Dostoevsky
I am a (semi)liberal atheist Dostoevsky lover. Today, I started reading the book Demons, which I got based on the assertion on the back that it is Dostoevsky's "darkest novel." Such a statement made me salivate, as I love Dostoevsky's psychological darkness. However, I was not fully aware that this was his darkest novel because it is is filled with evil godless radicals. I'm relatively certain that I will still enjoy the book, because, well, it's Dostoevsky's darkest novel, and I'm sure the evil godless radicals can be seen as statements of general human nature. But it got me thinking, I'm positive that I'm not the only liberal atheist Dostoevsky lover. In fact, I'm certain that among Dostoevsky's fans, a rather large chunk would describe themselves the same way. So, tell me, my fellow Dostoevsky loving godless radicals, intellectuals, progressives, and so on and so forth, how do you feel about Dostoevsky's political and religious views? Does it ever get difficult to read his works when he derails your views so heavily? Personally, I'm not politically motivated enough to be bothered, and his religious characters are often balanced out by equally interesting(and not repulsive) atheistic characters, such as Ivan Karamazov. I'm curious as to how Demons will play out for me, though.
Posted By Desolation at Tue 6 Oct 2009, 2:36 AM in Dostoevsky, Fyodor || 3 Replies
Moving Passages
Anyone who has read Dostoyevsky knows that he can write some extremely passionate and moving passages, whether if they'd be religous or philosophical in nature. So quote any of your favorite passages from Dostoyevsky that possess that particular and unique emotional intensity found in his writings: *SPOILERS ARE NOT ALLOWED* Here's one from "The Idiot" "He remembered that during his epileptic fits, or rather immediately preceding them, he had always experienced a moment or two when his whole heart, and mind, and body seemed to wake up to vigour and light; when he became filled with joy and hope, and all his anxieties seemed to be swept away for ever; these moments were but presentiments, as it were, of the one final second (it was never more than a second) in which the fit came upon him. That second, of course, was inexpressible. When his attack was over, and the prince reflected on his symptoms, he used to say to himself: "These moments, short as they are, when I feel such extreme consciousness of myself, and consequently more of life than at other times, are due only to the disease--to the sudden rupture of normal conditions. Therefore they are not really a higher kind of life, but a lower." This reasoning, however, seemed to end in a paradox, and lead to the further consideration:--"What matter though it be only disease, an abnormal tension of the brain, if when I recall and analyze the moment, it seems to have been one of harmony and beauty in the highest degree--an instant of deepest sensation, overflowing with unbounded joy and rapture, ecstatic devotion, and completest life?" Vague though this sounds, it was perfectly comprehensible to Muishkin, though he knew that it was but a feeble expression of his sensations. That there was, indeed, beauty and harmony in those abnormal moments, that they really contained the highest synthesis of life, he could not doubt, nor even admit the possibility of doubt. He felt that they were not analogous to the fantastic and unreal dreams due to intoxication by hashish, opium or wine. Of that he could judge, when the attack was over. These instants were characterized--to define it in a word--by an intense quickening of the sense of personality. Since, in the last conscious moment preceding the attack, he could say to himself, with full understanding of his words: "I would give my whole life for this one instant," then doubtless to him it really was worth a lifetime. For the rest, he thought the dialectical part of his argument of little worth; he saw only too clearly that the result of these ecstatic moments was stupefaction, mental darkness, idiocy. No argument was possible on that point. His conclusion, his estimate of the "moment," doubtless contained some error, yet the reality of the sensation troubled him. What's more unanswerable than a fact? And this fact had occurred. The prince had confessed unreservedly to himself that the feeling of intense beatitude in that crowded moment made the moment worth a lifetime. "I feel then," he said one day to Rogojin in Moscow, "I feel then as if I understood those amazing words--'There shall be no more time.'" And he added with a smile: "No doubt the epileptic Mahomet refers to that same moment when he says that he visited all the dwellings of Allah, in less time than was needed to empty his pitcher of water." "
Posted By DanielBenoit at Tue 22 Sep 2009, 12:22 AM in Dostoevsky, Fyodor || 3 Replies