“Dostoyevsky gives me more than any scientist. More than Gauss.” – Albert Einstein
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer born to a middle-class family in 1821. A man who embarked on a truly treacherous life, he produced countless novels damning the duality of human nature. His upbringing was marked by great educational opportunities, and exposure to the brutal fight of the lower Russian classes through his father’s hospital for the poor. He was deeply isolated when away at his aristocratic school- and seemed heavily impacted by the cruelty forced upon his fathers’ patients. He suffered a personal loss while still a teenager and had to abandon his educational aspirations to become a military engineer- a vocation Dostoyevsky loathed and was unsuited to. It was here he began to develop his lifelong illness of epilepsy, thought by many to be in response to his father’s death- and possible murder-. Upon graduation, Dostoyevsky rather morbidly follows his engineering path, though soon decides to write as well. It is through this notion that he becomes entangled with a literary circle known as the Petrashevsky Circle, a group dedicated to reading controversial and soon illegal works. For his role in the group, it is then, in 1849, that Dostoyevsky is sentenced to death. What waited for Dostoyevsky in the firing range was not a bullet, but a radical change in outlook. Just a few minutes before he was shot, a cart arrived adjusting his sentence to Siberian banishment. He left with a newfound gratitude for life, and yet a complete vision of the shackles of humanity.
His latter, more refined half of his writing career would bring him world renown and applause. His 1864 novel Notes from Underground follows a civil servant who is completely disavowed with all things of life, furious at both the outside and in. The unnamed man completely acknowledges that his utter depression is his own goal, with his decline part of his natural plan for life. Here, Dostoyevsky closely deduces that however much we chase success and happiness, regardless of achievement, suffering will follow us. You will always have something to suffer about, and our progress will never be as clear as we dream it. This stands for both a person or humans as a society.
Dostoyevsky’s next major work, 1866’s Crime and Punishment is his most famous work. Rodion Raskolnikov is a well-liked, handsome and somewhat spoilt student who finds himself in complete poverty after quitting both university and his tutoring job. His hard times evolve his sheer hatred at the world’s injustice, namely the fact that he, a smart and talented young boy can remain penniless, whereas ugly and old women such as his pawnbroker can be rich. This thought process culminates when Raskolnikov kills his pawnbroker, and her sister along the way, to steal her money. However, his perception of himself is thrown outwards as he struggles to deal with newfound emotions and inner doubt. Here, Dostoyevsky eloquently describes how every person frequently distorts their personality. Growing up is distinguishing between what traits we think we have, and what we have. As Raskolnikov discovers, most people are often far nicer than they or others might perceive them to be, regardless of their relationship with crime. Alongside this analysis, Dostoyevsky offers deep philosophical arguments in this novel, for example questioning whether intelligent people have a right to crime if it means their ideas are realised- would it had been right for Newton to kill for the apple to drop.
Dostoyevsky’s last work that I will touch upon is The Brothers Karamazov. It follows the relationship of four brothers- between three mothers- and their relationship with their unloving, cowardly and selfish father. The vast difference in the personalities of each brother, and the extent of care exhibited by the father to each, devolves into a tale of beastliness and compulsiveness starting with a will dispute. This novel is Dostoyevsky’s utter critique of different personality types and his resentment of change. He presents the overzealous religious types as good-hearted and kind but ineffective and gullible. The oppositional atheist theologists are too despairingly crippled, immoral and cold. And the middle grounders are either too lustful and compulsive or meaningless and boring. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, described The Brothers Karamazov as “the greatest novel ever written.”
Reading Dostoyevsky is essential because nowhere else will you find a complete analysis of the human personality, an analysis with which you immediately sympathise with. The teachings of his novels can prescribe someone’s inner narcissist, give humanistic faces t
o criminals, and burden you with despair.
“The more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”
Comments