Dostoevsky 5 Novels
Sinikka Curz
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, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and the emergence of Existentialism and Freudianism.[3] His books have been translated into more than 170 languages, and served as the inspiration for many films.
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.[13] Dostoevsky encountered the patients, who were at the lower end of the Russian social scale, when playing in the hospital gardens.[14]
Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age. From the age of three, he had 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.[15] 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.[16][17] Dostoevsky was greatly influenced by the work of Nikolai Gogol.[18] Although his father's approach to education has been described as strict and harsh,[19] Dostoevsky himself reported that his imagination was brought alive by nightly readings by his parents.[14]
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.[20] 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.[21]
Although Dostoevsky had a delicate physical constitution, his parents described him as hot-headed, stubborn, and cheeky.[22] 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.[23] 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.[24][17]
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).[25][26]
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."[27] 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".[28][29]
Signs of Dostoevsky's epilepsy may have first appeared on learning of the death of his father on 16 June 1839,[30] although the reports of a seizure originated from accounts written by his daughter (later expanded by Sigmund Freud[31]) 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 Mikhail perpetuated the story.[32] 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.[33][29]
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".[34] Dostoevsky's first completed literary work, a translation of Honor de Balzac's novel Eugnie Grandet, was published in June and July 1843 in the 6th and 7th volumes of the journal Repertoire and Pantheon,[35][36] followed by several other translations. None were successful, and his financial difficulties led him to write a novel.[37][29]
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".[38] Poor Folk was released on 15 January 1846 in the St Petersburg Collection almanac and became a commercial success.[39][40]
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.[41][42]
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,[43] 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".[44] 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.[45][46] 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.[47]
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