Reading the Classics #77: Fyodor Dostoevsky
I’ve been waiting a while to do this post, and now the time has finally come lol. Today I present Post #77, about Fyodor Dostoevsky. I’ve had a fascination with Russian Literature since about fall of last year, and it really grew once I wrote a paper about it for school. I chose the topic for my paper just because, but I had to read a bunch of books to be properly acquainted on the subject, so that’s how I got my first taste of Fyodor Dostoevsky. His writing is absolutely phenomenal. He was such a master of words, perhaps more so than Dickens himself. I love it, and I think that anyone else who reads his books will love it too. I’m gonna try not to ramble, but this post will probably still end up being long, so brace yourselves. That being said, let’s begin by looking at the life of this great author.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born November 11, 1821 in the outskirts of Moscow. He grew up reading classics like Homer, Goethe, and Alexander Pushkin (Another famous Russian author), and this greatly influenced his writing in the years to come. After spending time as a Lieutenant Engineer in the Russian military, he decided to pursue a literary career. He began by translating Honore de Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet and Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart into Russian, and in 1845 completed his first novel, Poor Folk (More on this later). Fyodor was also a member of the Petrashevsky Circle, a group of literary men that was going fine until 1849, where everyone was falsely accused of treason and arrested. They almost got executed too, but the Tsar saved them at the last moment, so it’s thanks to him that we got to fully experience Dostoevsky’s genius. A period of relative inactivity followed in his life; in 1864 both his wife and his brother died, and his gambling addiction nearly made him bankrupt. But he picked himself back up, started writing again, and made his way back to publicity with the publication of Crime and Punishment. More novels followed, such as The Idiot, Demons (Also known as The Possessed), and The Brothers Karamazov. Tsar Alexander II made Dostoevsky the “Spiritual Guide and Teacher” for the Tsar’s two sons; this appointment helped Dostoevsky to meet many influential members of Russian society. But at the beginning of 1881, he suffered from epilepsy and three hemorrhages, and died while quoting the Bible on January 25, 1881. He is buried in Saint Petersburg next to his favorite poet, Vasily Zhukovsky. Quite the interesting guy, if I do say so myself. But this post is supposed to be about the books, so I should probably get to that before this gets as long as War and Peace XD. Let’s jump in.
1. Crime and Punishment
2. The Brothers Karamazov
3. Demons
4. The Idiot
5. Notes from Underground
6. The House of the Dead
7. Poor Folk
8. The Gambler
9. White Nights
10. An Honest Thief
11. The Peasant Marey
12. A Christmas Tree and a Wedding
Until the day I die, I will always have good things to say about Crime and Punishment. First there was crime, then there was punishment XD. Sorry, I’ll be serious now. The story revolves around Rodion Raskolnikov, a student who is desperately in need of money to support himself and his sister. He ponders the thought of murdering an old pawnbroker and stealing her money. For the first 100 pages or so he’s going through his life, trying to decide his own morality, and what is right and wrong. Well, he makes the decision to murder, and follows through with it. Now Raskolnikov is in anguish, everywhere he goes he expects to be arrested. He’s constantly paranoid and guilt-ridden, and much of the book describes his internal turmoil. Now, if you didn’t know this about me, I’m fascinated by psychology, and the minds of murders/serial killers. So this book was like finding gold for me; I loved it so much. And the ending was beautiful. Like, I’ve read books whose endings are pretty bad, but this exceeded my expectations. You absolutely must read this novel, it’ll greatly benefit your life.
Next up on the list is another magnificent novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Published just a few months before Dostoevsky’s death, this is the longest of his books, and is considered to be his magnum opus. The plot follows three brothers; Dimitri, Ivan, and Alexi. Their father Fyodor was a drunkard and an overall bad guy, and the three sons grew up with very different perceptions of life. Dimitri is prone to anger but he’s perfectly fine with that; to him life is meaningless, so he might as well live for pleasure. Ivan spends his life as a philosopher, refusing to believe in a God, but trying to find other meaning in life. Alexi spends several years in a monastery, and as a result is very religious. Much of the book deals with their various interactions with their father and each other, and reaping the consequences of choices they made. It’s a fascinating story. And again, the ending was great. Overall, I really enjoyed the book. The amount of philosophy, history, and intriguing writing is blended perfectly. This is another book that you need to read before you die.
This next novel, as the title suggests, is a somewhat dark story. Demons has been called “one of humanity’s best achievements -perhaps even its supreme achievement- in the art of prose fiction”. It’s a story about Nihilism, the philosophy that life is meaningless and we’re all gonna die in the end. Nihilism was becoming more and more popular in Russia, so Dostoevsky (A devout Christian) wrote Demons as an attack against it. The book itself follows Pyotr Verkhovensky and Nikolai Stavrogin, two students who are leading an underground Nihilist movement in their area. It’s not just a political movement either, it ends up becoming a cover for murder and other crimes. Let me tell you, the ending of this story is pretty dark, even for my standards lol. There was even a part that Dostoevsky wrote, that the publishers in Russia forced him to remove due to being too dark. I won’t talk about it here, and if you really wanna know you can easily find it, but it truly was messed up. Yeah, people may take this book as a pointless novel full of violence, but his main point, as you’ll find if you read it, is that Nihilism contributes nothing but chaos to society. It’s a great book though, read it if you can.
*Looks at how much more I have to cover* Yeah, this is gonna be a long post. But whatever, this is important lol. Out of all of Dostoevsky’s writings, there are 4 books that stand out as his greatest. I’ve already covered three of them (Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Demons), and now we come to the 4th one, The Idiot. Judging on the title, this book could have been written about (Insert names of political figures that I can’t name without sparking a political debate), but instead the main character is Prince Lev Myshkin. Myshkin thinks that society is perfect and he assumes the best of people; as you can expect, he gets taken advantage of quite a lot, because society is messed up. Then there’s the classic love story where Myshkin and this other guy (Rogozhin) are friends, but like the same girl (Nastasya), which leads to more problems. And, as often happens in a Dostoevsky novel, there’s murder involved. All in all it’s an interesting story. I enjoyed it, definitely, just not as much as the previously mentioned novels. It’s worth reading if you have the time for it.
Next up we’ve got Notes from Underground, which can be aptly described as a work of existentialist literature. For those who don’t know, existentialism is a system of thought that believes in no God or higher deity, and that every man is in control of himself. It’s not the best definition, so you might want to research it yourself, but that’s the idea. Now, Dostoevsky wasn’t an Existentialist, but the unnamed narrator of this novel was. Half the book is philosophical and full of self-pity, while the other half is the narrator talking about different events in his life. Some of them are good, and make him think that there very well could be good in society, while other events just make him more bitter at the world. In a way, it’s almost like Joker (Which I finally got to see). The narrator is a victim of both himself and partly society, which I find very interesting. If you like philosophy, this is a good book for you. A very well-written novel.
The House of the Dead is really interesting in that it’s semi-autobiographical of Dostoevsky himself. Remember when I said he almost got executed, but the Tsar saved him? Well, he was saved from death, but still had to spend 4 years in the labor camps in Siberia. Out of that experience came this novel. In this story, Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov (Gotta love these Russian names XD) has been sentenced to 10 years of labor for murdering his wife. Due to his rich status, the other prisoners treat him particularly harshly, which takes a toll on him both physically and mentally. It leads to a “spiritual re-awakening” for Aleksandr, which helps with his standing in the prison. By the end of the story he is released, and is a new man. When The House of the Dead was published, the depictions of the labor camps caused an outcry in Russia, which eventually led to the reformation of the camps. Yet again it’s a good story, but I didn’t find it as enjoyable as any of the previous novels.
I feel bad for the poor folk in this story, Poor Folk. *Laughs at the unfunniness of his own joke* Anyway, it’s the story of a guy and a girl who are like second cousins or something similar to that, and don’t live together but are close friends. They’re constantly exchanging letters, in most of which they just complain about how hard their lives are. As you continue to read you find out more about them, their families, and the miserable conditions that the poorer class lived in. It’s both realistic and concerning, the squallor they lived in. Slowly but surely, the girl finds her fortunes improving, and soon a wealthy man proposes to her. She accepts, and pretty much leaves her cousin to be poor the rest of his life. In the final letter he begs her not to leave, and says that he’ll die without her. Yeah, it’s a pretty sad book. This one isn’t as worth reading as the others, unless you want to understand more about the plight of the poor in 19th century Russia, and I doubt any of you really do lol.
One of Dostoevsky’s less known works, is The Gambler. It’s a novella, and is partly based in Dostoevsky’s own gambling addiction. It starts out with this Russian General who is in debt to this French guy, and has no way to pay the debt. He and his daughter are living in poverty due to this, until his Grandmother shows up. She tells the General that she can gamble and win all the money he needs to pay the debt. Turns out she’s a decent gambler, and she does win a good amount of the money; but she quickly becomes addicted and ends up going into debt herself. The rest of the story is full of gambling and debt and all that fun stuff, and that’s most of the book. I’d rank this one at about the same as Poor Folk, but it does continue to amuse me that this old lady appears and decides she’s gonna gamble to help her grandson XD.
And finally, we come to the four of Dostoevsky’s short stories. I’m gonna rank these all together. A Christmas Tree and a Wedding is the story of this guy at a party, and he’s just observing the guests, and then it gets really weird, like in a sexual way. Don’t read that one. An Honest Thief is about a tailor who is trying to take care of an alcoholic and get him back on his feet. The alcoholic ends up stealing from him, but confesses it in the end. The Peasant Marey is pretty much a true story from Dostoevsky’s childhood, about him being scared of wolves. Last is White Nights, which is a very sad story of unrequited love and a lonely man. If it was a modern story, it’d probably be the tale of a Redditor trying to find a girlfriend XD. But in all seriousness, none of these short stories were that amazing. It wouldn’t make a difference if you read them or not.
And that is my very long take on the writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky. I know that was a lot, but thanks for reading it. I hope you’ve developed an appreciation for this guy, because he really was a genius. If you want to know more about Dostoevsky, and Russian Literature in general, I wrote this long paper about it last year that I can share. Or you could just go on Wikipedia. But I’m cooler than Wikipedia. Anyway, that’s all from me this time. Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you next time!
1835- Nevsky Prospect by Nikolai Gogol
The Portrait by Nikolai Gogol
Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol
1835-1836- The Nose by Nikolai Gogol
1842- Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol
1846- Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1848- The Honest Thief by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Christmas Tree and a Wedding by Fyodor Dostoevsky
White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1861- The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1862- Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
1864- Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1866- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1867- The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1869- The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
1872- Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1876- The Peasant Marey by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1877- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
1880- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1886- The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
1912- Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy
1962- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
