Fyodor Dostoevsky Biography
Born: November 11, 1821
Moscow, Russia
Died: January 28, 1881
St. Petersburg, Russia
Russian novelist and author
The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky was well known in his country
during his life and has since been praised around the world as a writer.
He is best known for writing novels that had a great understanding of
psychology (the study of how the human mind works), especially the
psychology of people who, losing their reason, would become insane or
commit murder.
The young man
Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow, Russia, on November 11, 1821, the
son of a doctor. His family was very religious, and Dostoevsky was
deeply religious all his life. He began reading widely when he was a
youth. He was first educated by his mother, father, and tutors, but at
thirteen years old he was sent to a private school. Two years later his
mother died. His father, a cruel man, was murdered in 1839, when
Dostoevsky was eighteen and attending school in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Dostoevsky was trained to be a military engineer, but he disliked school
and loved literature. When he finished school, he turned from the career
he was trained for and devoted himself to writing. His earliest letters
show him to be a young man of passion and energy, as well as somewhat
mentally unstable.
Early writings
Dostoevsky began his career writing fiction about poor people in harsh
situations. In 1843 he finished his first novel,
Poor Folk,
a social tale about a down-and-out government worker. The novel was
praised by a respected critic. Dostoevsky's second novel,
The Double
(1846), was received less warmly; his later works in the 1840s were
received coldly.
The Double,
however, has come to be known as his best early work, and in many ways
it was ahead of its time.
The lack of success of
The Double
troubled Dostoevsky. From 1846 to 1849 his life and work were
characterized by aimlessness and confusion. The short stories and novels
he wrote during this period are for the most part experiments in
different forms and different subject matters.
Dostoevsky's life showed some of the same pattern of uncertain
experimenting. In 1847 he joined a somewhat subversive (antigovernment)
group called the Petrashevsky Circle. In 1849 the members were arrested.
After eight months in prison, Dostoevsky was "sentenced"
to death. In reality,
though, this sentence was only a joke. At one point, however,
Dostoevsky believed he had only moments to live, and he never forgot the
feelings of that experience. He was sentenced to four years in prison
and four years of forced service in the army in Siberia, Russia.
Years of change
Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg in 1859 with an unhealthy wife,
Maria Issaeva, whom he had married in Siberia. Their marriage was not
happy. To support himself, Dostoevsky edited the journal
Time
with his brother Mikhail and wrote a number of fictional works. In 1861
he published
Memoirs from the House of the Dead,
a work of fiction based on his experiences in prison. By and large his
writings during this period showed no great artistic advance over his
early work and gave no hint of the greatness that came forth in 1864
with his
Notes from the Underground.
Dostoevsky's life during this period was characterized by poor
health, poverty, and complicated emotional situations. He fell in love
with the young student Polina Suslova and carried on a frustrating
affair with her for several years. He traveled outside the country in
1862 and 1863 to get away from the people to whom he owed money, to
improve his health, and to gamble.
Notes from the Underground
is a short novel. In this work Dostoevsky attempts to justify the
existence of individual freedom as a necessary part of humankind. He
argues against the view that man is a creature of reason and that
society can be organized in a way that guarantees the happiness of
humans. He insists that humans desire freedom more than happiness, but
he also sees that unchecked freedom is a destructive force, since there
is
Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Reproduced by permission of
Archive Photos, Inc.
no guarantee that humans will use freedom in a constructive way.
Indeed, the evidence of history suggests that humans seek the
destruction of others and of themselves.
The great novels
Dostoevsky's first wife died in 1864, and in the following year
he married Anna Grigorievna Snitkina. She was practical and
even-tempered, and therefore she was the very opposite of his first wife
and his lover. There is very little doubt that she was largely
responsible for introducing better conditions for his work by taking
over many of the practical tasks that he hated and handled badly.
In 1866 Dostoevsky published
Crime and Punishment,
which is the most popular of his great novels, perhaps because it is
appealing on different levels. It can be read as a serious and complex
work of art, but it can also be enjoyed as a gripping detective story.
The novel is concerned with the murder of an old woman by a student,
Raskolnikov, while he is committing robbery in an attempt to help his
family and his own career. The murder occurs at the very beginning of
the novel, and the rest of the book has to do with the pursuit of
Raskolnikov by the detective Porfiry and by his own conscience. In the
end he gives himself up and decides to accept the punishment for his
act.
The Dostoevskys traveled in 1867 and remained away from Russia for more
than four years. Their economic condition was very difficult, and
Dostoevsky repeatedly lost what little money they had while gambling.
The Idiot
was written between 1867 and 1869, and Dostoevsky stated that in this
work he intended to portray "the wholly beautiful man."
The hero of the novel is a good man who attempts to live in a society
gone wrong, and it is uncertain whether he succeeds.
Dostoevsky began writing
The Possessed
(also translated as
The Devils
) in 1870 and published it in 1871–1872. The novel began as a
political pamphlet and was based on a political murder that took place
in Moscow on November 21, 1869. In
The Possessed
Dostoevsky raises a minor event to great importance. Many readers see
The Possessed
not only as an accurate account of the politics of the time, but also
as a visionary statement on the future of politics in Russia and
elsewhere.
The Brothers Karamazov
(1879–1880) is the greatest of Dostoevsky's novels. The
psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) ranked it as one of the
greatest artistic achievements of all time. The novel is about four sons
and their guilt in the murder of their father, Fyodor. Each of the sons
may be characterized by a major trait: Dmitri by passion, Ivan by
reason, Alyosha by spirit, and Smerdyakov by everything that is ugly in
human nature. Smerdyakov kills his father, but to a degree the other
three brothers are guilty in thought and desire.
Dostoevsky sent the last part of
The Brothers Karamazov
to his publisher on November 8, 1880, and he died soon afterward, on
January 28, 1881. At the time of his death he was at the height of his
career in Russia, and many Russians mourned his death. He had begun to
win praise in Europe as well, and interest in him has continued to
increase.
For More Information
Frank, Joseph.
Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Payne, Robert.
Dostoevsky: A Human Portrait.
New York: Knopf, 1961.
Scanlon, James P.
Dostoevsky the Thinker.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.