Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was a Russian essayist, journalist, short story writer, and novelist. He, through his works, penetrated the human mind in the troubled atmosphere of 19th-century social, political, and economic restlessness. Most of his literary pieces are constructed on the themes of psychological and philosophical references.
Dostoyevsky left a volume of works consisting of 16 short stories, 4 novellas, 12 novels, and many other literary works. His most acclaimed works are “Demons”, “Crime and Punishment”, and “the Idiot”. In 1864, Dostoyevsky’s novella “Notes from Underground” that is perceived as one of the beginning works of existentialism.
He was also considered a leading psychological novelist in the world of psychological literary works. His peeping into the darkest mode of human psychology and the instances of spiritual illumination makes him a distinguished writer of the fiction of 20th-century literature.
Dostoyevsky approaches almost every aspect of literary studies. For instance, he wrote in the genre of psychology, literary criticism, modernism, existentialism, theology, and shaped them according to his philosophy. He also played his part in journalism by precisely predicting the behavior of Russian revolutionaries after gaining power and influence.
Moreover, most of Dostoyevsky’s writings have been translated into about 170 languages. These works are widely read all over the world and influenced many other writers and psychologists like Anton Chekov, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
A Short Biography of Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born in Russia on 11 November 1821. He was the second child of a Russian doctor for lower-class people, Dr. Mikhail Dostoevsky. His mother was Maria Dostoevskaya. Furthermore, his parents were from a multi-ethnic noble family.
Dostoyevsky spent his childhood in a small family house in the surroundings of the lower-class Mariinsky Hospital. It was located in a poor district on the sidelines of Moscow. Dostoyevsky lived there playing on the grounds while encountering those poor patients.
Dostoyevsky was exposed to literature from a very young age by his parents and nanny. For instance, his nanny, Alena Frolovna would narrate the stories of mythical heroic figures. Also, his parents would tell the children legend stories at night that specifically awakened his imaginary world. Likewise, he was introduced to many influential writers of the time like Ann Radcliff, Pushkin, Goethe, Cervantes, Walter Scott, and Schiller. His mother used to teach Dostoyevsky the Bible also.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s childhood impressions can be traced in his works. For example, in “Crime and Punishment”, “The Devils”, and “The Brothers Karamazov” one major incident of his early childhood can be seen. It was when Dostoyevsky was a young boy; someone sent him to call his father to examine a 9-year old girl who was raped by an adult man. Therefore, his works comprise the themes of lust and desire of an adult man for a young lady.
Likewise, in “The Peasant Marey”, Dostoyevsky portrays a childhood incident of a family servant. In the story, the child Dostoyevsky perceives that he overhears the howls of a Wolf. However, Marey relieves him of his fear.
In 1833, his father admitted Dostoyevsky and his brother to a French Boarding school because he was a religious man. Then they were migrated to Chermak boarding school. There he felt like an outsider and awkward presence. Later, in May 1836, Dostoyevsky and his brother were forced to join Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute to become military men. However, Dostoyevsky was fragile and physically delicate; he was more like a foreigner in the military academy.
His brother, Mikhail was also rejected from the academy because of health issues. He was sent to a learning academy in Estonia. Dostoyevsky would go to visit his brother and was a frequent audience member of plays, ballads, operas, and concerts. Moreover, his lack of interest in mathematics and military engineering studies made Dostoyevsky different from his batch mates. In 1843, he took the job of a lieutenant and began his writing career.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Writing Career
Early Writing
In the summer of 1843, Dostoyevsky published the translation of the novel “Eugenie Grandet” by Honore De Balzac. It was printed in a journal, Repertoire, and Pantheon. He followed to write more translations in the upcoming times but none became successful. These failures and his financial issues led him to begin writing his first novel.
Fiction Career
Dostoyevsky finished his first novel, “Poor Folk” in 1845. With a friend’s influence, he showed it to a great literary critic, Vissarion Belinsky. Belinsky placed it as the first ‘social novel’ of Russia. Later, St. Petersburg publishing platform published the novel in 1846 and it gained instant commercial success in Russia.
Within a very short time of about a month after his first novel, Dostoyevsky published another novel, “The Double”. He also received the philosophy of socialism from French thinkers like Saint-Simon, Proudhon, and Fourier. He also learned a lot about socialism from Belinsky but was devastated by his atheism. Therefore, he, at last, broke with him and his circles.
Another Wave of Failure
When Dostoyevsky failed in his second novel “The Double”, he fell into depression due to which he frequently faced seizure attacks. However, he did not give up and wrote many short stories for the paper, Annals of the Fatherland in 1846-1848, e.g. “The Landlady” and “White Nights”. After the failure of these stories to gain attention, he joined the group of utopian socialism, Petrashevsky Circle.
Political Involvement and Mock Execution
However, some of the circle members secretly joined a group supporting revolution and egalitarian communism. He was arrested in 1849 along with other members of the group. However, their lives were spared at the last moment of execution. Affected by this, Dostoyevsky wrote “Crime and Punishment”.
After the mock execution, he began to value life, freedom, and spiritualism and created a lifelong disgust for materialism. In most of his works, Dostoyevsky appreciated life as a blessing and a unique gift and these feelings came due to his terrible experience.
Impact of Prison
In 1849, he published the beginning parts of the novel “Netochka Nezvanova” in Annals of the Fatherland. However, it was not completed because of his exile. He was sentenced to 4 years in a Siberian labor camp. When he returned to Russia after 10 years, he wrote a novel, “The House of the Dead” (1861-1862) about prison experiences. In the novel, he expresses all the cruelties and miseries of prison life.
In exile, he also struggled with the opposing beliefs of skepticism and remained a staunch Christian. Furthermore, in 1857, he married a widow Mariya Dmitriyevna Isayeva but could not find happiness in married life. She died seven years later.
Return to Europe
After his return from Siberia, Dostoyevsky spent much of the 1860s in Europe where he escaped from the difficulties and his debtors in Russia. There, he made a contract with a publisher for the exchange of some money in advance. In 1866, he wrote for him the novel, “The Gambler”. Then he married his stenographer Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina and began a stable life.
Dostoyevsky’s Masterpieces
In 1866, he wrote “Crime and Punishment”, his masterpiece, about the dilemma of good and evil. In 1868-1869, he produced another great work “The Idiot” about the psychological aspects of life. In 1872, “The Possessed” came, which was a political novel. It earned him huge disgust from the radicals.
His last and one of the greatest novels in history “The Brothers Karamazov” was written in 1879-1880. It also focuses on the philosophical and religious themes of his works. On 21 January 1881, he suffered from hemorrhage and died in St. Petersburg.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Writing Style
Psychological Aspects
Dostoyevsky’s works have more psychological struggles than physical ones. His narrator penetrates deep into the minds of the characters revealing their full inner and outer personalities. Whenever he expresses the mental level of a character, his narration becomes the same as the character’s class and psyche.
For example, in “Crime and Punishment”, the narrator gets inside the mind of the main character Raskolnikov. He explains almost every aspect of his thoughts and feelings. Also, Dostoyevsky’s use of repetitive round dialogues and eclipses shows his mental abnormality and uncertainty.
Also, the drawings of Dostoyevsky impart a psychological shade of his life and the life of his characters. Although they appear to be unorganized and messy dotted sketches, they represent beautiful artistry and talent.
Unreliable Protagonists
Dostoyevsky makes his protagonists unique by giving them unreliable personalities. For instance, the characters serve as narrators and represent conflicting ideas in their attitude, narration, inner thoughts, and dialogues. These features impart a unique tinge to the stories of Dostoyevsky and give them a distinctive style.
Again the example of Raskolnikov can be taken as an unreliable protagonist in “Crime and Punishment”. For instance, his concept of time is questioned and cannot be trusted because he is psychologically sick for most of the story. Therefore, when he sleeps sometimes in his home or the street, he wakes up after a long time thinking that less time has passed. It is the information of other characters that tell about the exact time that has passed.
Another instance of Raskolnikov’s incredibility is quite exaggerated when he thinks his room is as small as a cupboard. It becomes suffocating for him. However, in the latter part of the story, four other people are accommodated easily in the room. They do not object to the little space of the room.
Satire
According to Bakhtin, Dostoyevsky revived the tradition of satire as a genre and mixed it with symbolism, fantasy, comedy, drama, and adventure. This attitude of Menippean satire can be seen in his “The dream of a Ridiculous Man” and in the story “Bobok” included in “A Writer’s Diary”.
Likewise “Crime and Punishment” and “The Legend of the Great Inquisitor” can be regarded as works of satire. In this way, satire makes the center of Dostoyevsky’s writings. These create ironic representations of the point that he wants to convey through his characters.
Gothic Elements
Dostoyevsky had a love and interest in gothic tales and adventures from an early stage of life. His nanny and parents would narrate gothic tales to him. Likewise, from a very young age, he read gothic writers like Ann Radcliffe, Soulie, Hoffman, and Balzac. This added darker elements, shady motifs, dreams, visions, and irrational mysterious figures in his works.
His first gothic story is “The Landlady”. Also, in his other works like “Crime and Punishment”, there are dirty rooms and Raskolnikov’s unreliable character. Similarly, in “The Brothers Karamazov”, Katerina Ivanovna’s mysterious character can also be placed in the genre of Gothicism.
Time and Space
Dostoyevsky makes use of time and space as his major tools to reinforce the circumstances in the scenes. For instance, he uses the Russian alternative for the word ‘suddenly’ in “Crime and Punishment” 560 times. This sets the situation of tension and the stretched atmosphere in the story.
Another major characteristic of his literary pieces is the use of exact locations and round numbers like 10, 100, 1000, etc. in his works.
Representation of the Disintegrated Age
In most of his works, Dostoyevsky’s approach to literary styles is different in different writings. This attitude towards literary forms emerges out of the changing era itself that was moving towards modernism. These changes can be seen in the novels, “The Brothers Karamazov” in 1880, “Demons” (1872), and “The Adolescent” in 1875.
In these works, he represents the acceptance of fragmentation and disintegration on one hand while on the other hand; he demands harmony in the social life. In a way, Dostoyevsky follows the trend of realism and goes with the changing conventions while retaining the idealistic vision of life.
Combination of Various Forms in a Single Unity
Dostoyevsky combines in his works disparate genres to form a unique and novel genre. For instance, he takes various examples and experiences from pamphlets, street incidents, philosophy, religion, grotesque, anecdotes, etc. Then he creates his story with all the elements interwoven in a unified whole.
Dostoyevsky harmonically used different experiences to form the genre of adventure novel to test the liability of his characters and their philosophical ideas. For example, he puts them in extraordinary situations to judge their responses to a certain situation and see the philosophy of life which dominates them.
Themes in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Writings
Realism
The works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky are considered to be realistic. He was called a literary realist because of his depiction of everyday matters, although he considered himself a ‘fantastic realist’. In his works, Dostoyevsky combined the ordinary life instances in a strange and unique combination to create something extraordinary.
For example, in “Crime and Punishment”, he depicts his personal experience of execution and punishment. However, he fabricates the story from a strange psychological perspective to show the intense effects of such events on the mind.
Depiction of Suicide
There is a stark depiction of the feelings and actions of suicide in Dostoyevsky’s literary works. It is because of the contemporary situation in Russia. The era of 1860-1880 was nearly n epidemic era for suicides in Russia. Therefore, many writers depicted it in their writings.
Dostoyevsky’s point of view about suicides is the disbelief of suicide victims and killers in the God and afterlife. For example, Kirillov and Stavrogin in “Demons”, Ippolit in “The Idiot”, and Raskolnikov in “Crime and Punishment” have a sense of disbelief in immortality and God. For Dostoyevsky, belief in God was necessary for a stable existence.
Autobiographical Elements
Dostoyevsky’s personal life experiences played a vital role in the construction of his literary career. He depicted most of the incidents and experiences of his life in the stories of his characters. Mostly, we see prison life and problems in his works. For example, in “Crime and Punishment”, there is a representation of an imprisoned psyche. Also, “The House of the Dead” is Dostoyevsky’s semi-autobiography.
Likewise, in his works, there is an effect of his early life’s financial and social status. As he once said that the writings of stable and influential authors have flowery and appealing stories while his stories are marked by misery, poverty, and everyday life issues because of his low upbringing.
Religious Themes
Dostoyevsky’s body of literary works is based on his religious philosophy because of his attachment to religion. For him, Christ was the ultimate reality and he showed a fascination towards Christ and his teachings. He even once said that if Christ was a lie and he had to choose between truth and Christ, he would have chosen Christ.
In “The House of the Dead”, Dostoyevsky describes religious themes. In the semi-autobiography, he represents three religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. However, Christianity fascinates the characters more and it remains on a high level. Even in the secular novel “Notes from the Underground”, there are few religious references. The major Christian themes reappeared in “Crime and Punishment” in his later life.
Legacy
Dostoyevsky’s works continue to enthrall the world by raising questions about their faith and the meaning of life by making suspenseful plots. He is remembered as a pioneer of representing psychological in-depths. Also, the development of the two most notable genres, the dystopian novel and prison camp novel can be attributed to his works. Furthermore, Dostoyevsky is followed by many theologians around the world because of his profound religious themes.