Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky is my favorite author. I like it because, to me, no 19th century author had greater psychological insight or philosophical depth, or so systematically probed the mysteries of the human soul in the field of human psychic and spiritualistic ideology of real-life phenomena.
A brief account of the author
Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, b. November 11 (NS), 1821, d. Feb. 9 (NS), 1881, is on the cusp of Russian literature and many consider that it has brought the Western novel to the peak of its possibilities. Sigmund Freud, for example, considered the treatment of patricide in The BROTHERS KARAMAZOV to be the same as Shakespeare’s in Hamlet. The son of a Moscow military doctor who was assassinated by his servants, Dostoyevsky grew up in materially comfortable but psychologically damaging circumstances. After completing his education in military engineering in 1843, he soon turned to literature.
KAMRAMAZOV BROTHERS
The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80; English translation, 1927) is DOSTOYEVSKY’s last work and greatest novel. In it, Dostoyevsky introduces four Karamazov brothers: the passionate Dimitri, the intellectual Ivan, the mystic Alyson, and the misanthropic Smerdayakov. E dramatizes their fate, their relationship with their father, and the guilt they suffer for his murder. The novel deals with everything Dostoevsky struggled with during his life: faith and doubt, love of authority and its hatred, abstinence from sensuality, hatred of the human race and love of it.
Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment (1866), is a psychological masterpiece by the Russian novelist Fyodor DOSTOYEVSKY, it mixes contemporary 19th century themes such as the anonymous and alienating power of society with the universal problems of crime, guilt and redemption. Raskolnikov, an impoverished student in St. Petersburg, kills and robs an old pawnbroker, but his apparent motives serve simply to present the author’s exploration of the nature of justice and truth. Raskolnikov finally decides to accept punishment through his love for the young prostitute Sonya, whose life is one of suffering and remorse.
Notes from underground
The Underground (1864), a powerful work that is considered the philosophical testament of existentialism and the prologue to DOSTOYEVSKY’s great tragic novels. The Underground Man is a cynical citizen of St. Petersburg, alienated from his surroundings and from his fellow man, who nonetheless poses a powerful challenge to the impersonal forces of rationalism, progress, and social engineering. He is an uncompromising champion of free will.
The idiot
The Idiot (1869; English translation, 1913) portrays a morally innocent man, Prince, whose Mishkin, whose innocent and simple nature and epileptic seizures make him separate from certain. His Christlike qualities, far from influencing those around him, must be completely incongruous in a sinful world. Nastasya Filipovna, who has been cruelly treated by a former lover, is attracted to both Mishkin and the evil Rogozin, and cannot commit to either of them. When Rogozhjn kills her, Miskin allows her to be an unwitting accessory to the murder.
The possessed
DOSTOEVSKY’s next novel, Bessy (1872; The Possessed), earned him the permanent hatred of the radicals. Often regarded as the most brilliant political novel ever written, it weaves two plots. One refers to Nikolay Stavrogin, a man with a void at the center of his being. In his youth, Stavrogin, in a futile search for meaning, had embraced and abandoned a number of ideologies, each of which had been adopted by different intellectuals hypnotized by Stavrogin’s personality. Shatov has become a Slavophile who, like Dostoevsky himself, believes in the “God-bearing” Russian people. Existentialist critics (especially Albert Camus) were fascinated by Kirillov, who adopts a series of contradictory philosophical justifications for suicide. The most famous is that Kirillov argues that only an absolutely gratuitous act of self-destruction can prove that a person is free because such an act cannot be explained by any kind of self-interest and therefore violates all psychological laws. By committing suicide for no reason, Kirillov hopes to become the “man-god” and thus provide an example of human freedom in a world that has denied Christ (the God-man).
I like your books
Since his death, Dostoevsky’s fame has not stopped growing. Neither speaks more immediately of the mood and tone of the present century. In fact, one could say that the Western civilization of the second half of the 20th century has become “Dostoyevskian”.
