DOSTOEVSKY, FEODOR (1821–81)

Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was one of the most prominent and controversial Russian novelists of the nineteenth century. Dostoevsky’s harsh, tumultuous life provided ample material for his deeply troubling, emotionally charged fiction that explored fundamental questions of human destiny and vocation. A prolific writer and active public intellectual, Dostoevsky earned the reputations of a keen psychologist, religious prophet, the father of existentialism and inventor of a new literary style. His novels have been described as ‘polyphonic’ because they encompass ideas, convictions and destinies conveyed through a great variety of fictional voices. Prominent themes in Dostoevsky’s work included exploration of the irrational and destructive in human nature, intricate analysis of freedom and responsibility, and powerful depictions of the dangers of political radicalism and totalitarianism. The rich and engaging philosophical content of Dostoevsky’s work shaped the thinking of future generations of philosophers, writers, psychologists and political theorists.

Dostoevsky was born in Moscow on 30 October 1821 into the family of a military physician. At the age of 17 Feodor entered the School of Military Engineering where he received rigorous education in the sciences. In 1844 he abandoned his military career and devoted himself to literature. Dostoevsky’s first novel, Poor Folk (Bednye liudi, 1846) enjoyed a warm critical response and was even considered the first attempt ever at a social novel in Russia. Although it was written in a Romantic tradition, the novel already contained a germ of Dostoevsky’s celebrated psychologism.

The young novelist’s attraction to utopian socialist ideas and his involvement with the Petrashevsky circle—an ill-fated secret society of young intellectuals—resulted in his arrest, imprisonment and a subsequent death sentence that, however, was commuted at the very last moment to four years of hard labour in Siberia. The terrifying experience of being subjected to a mock execution and believing that he had only a few minutes left to live haunted Dostoevsky for the rest of his life. By his own account, it taught him to appreciate life even at the most unbearable moments of loss and despair. Profound meditations on life and death as well as passionate expressions of life affirmation were to appear conspicuously in his post-Siberian writings.

While in prison Dostoevsky underwent a profound spiritual transformation: he renounced his earlier socialist liberal views and came to see Christianity as the ultimate expression of truth, freedom and love. Despite the extreme hardship of imprisonment, Dostoevsky, a careful observer and intense thinker, dared to transform his experiences into a work of art. In 1861, upon his return to St Petersburg he published Notes From the House of the Dead (Zapiski iz mertvogo doma) —a thrilling fictional account of his Siberian experiences, offering unique insight into the criminal psyche, its violent and self-destructive impulses, and its all-too-human longing for appreciation. This book was soon followed by Dostoevsky’s celebrated Notes from Underground (Zapiski iz

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podpol’ya, 1864)—a peculiar blend of confession, psychological struggle, buffoonery and philosophical dispute, written from the perspective of a spiteful ‘anti-hero’ who rages against the contemporary rationalist, determinist and socialist-utopian projects. Because of its uncompromising exploration of the irrational in human nature and its precise, if bizarre, formulation of the paradoxes of freedom, Notes from Underground is considered

a classic of existentialist literature.

While working on Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky sadly endured the death of the two people closest to him—his wife Maria and his brother Mikhail. In addition, his journalistic projects, undertaken earlier with Mikhail, failed and left the novelist with an enormous financial debt. Astonishingly, in the midst of these misfortunes, which were intensified by his very poor health, Dostoevsky found strength and courage to live and work. In Crime and Punishment (Prestuplenie i nakazanie, 1866) he portrayed an ambitious young hero who, preoccupied by Napoleonic fantasies, attempts to test his ability and right to kill an allegedly evil old woman. Ideas of spiritual superiority, utilitarianism and rational egoism, which the hero uses intermittently to justify his deed, all fail in the face of sheer horror and guilt experienced by the unfortunate murderer.

In 1867 Dostoevsky remarried and spent the next four years in Europe avoiding his creditors. During this time he wrote The Idiot (1868–9), a tragic story of a Christ-like figure, Prince Myshkin, whose naive involvement in the convoluted affairs of other people lead to catastrophic consequences for himself and everyone around him. Dostoevsky returned to Russia in 1871 and in the following decade published two monumental novels, The Possessed (Besy, 1871–2) and The Brothers Karamazov (Brat’ya Karamazovy, 1879–80), as well as numerous essays, stories and socio-political commentaries. While his own political views expressed in his monthly one-person periodical Diary of a Writer (Dnevnik pisatelya, 1873–81) were quite eccentric and nationalistic, in The Possessed he offered a penetrating and witty critique of all the major developments of political radicalism in nineteenth-century Russia.

The monumental The Brothers Karamazov, staged around the tragedy of parricide, raised the questions of guilt and moral commitment, religious faith and disbelief, individual freedom and universal accountability. In this novel, finished just two months before the novelist’s death, Dostoevsky’s artistic creativity reached its height as he portrayed the characters’ struggle with the unbearable reality of human suffering, their rebellion against God’s creation and rediscovery of life’s splendour and beauty.

Dostoevsky died in January 1881, considered by many a national hero and an unsurpassable literary genius.

DOSTOEVSKY, FEODOR (1821–81)