Fyodor Dostoevsky Overview

In the period that marked the end of Imperial Russia, Fyodor Dostoevsky was an ardent defender of the old Empire. Despite his undying devotion to Russian liberalism and his complete rejection of Western influences, Dostoevsky did not see his work as a platform for his own political diatribe. Unlike his radical contemporaries, Dostoevsky avoided placing a political system at the center of his novels. Instead, he turned to the individual. After attending prestigious schools in Moscow, Dostoevsky began to try his hand at the literary form. A few forgettable novels like "Poor Folk" and "The Double" did not garner much attention, but did establish the author in certain circles as a young talent. As Russia's political landscape began to deteriorate, Dostoevsky's frustration grew, and he decided to abandon his aesthetic cause for a time and join a liberal, political organization called The Petrashevsky Circle. In 1852, his involvement landed him in a Siberian prison for four years, where he narrowly escaped execution. Armed with even stronger Orthodox beliefs and a stubborn faith in liberalism, Dostoevsky returned to Moscow and began his creative assault on the Russian literary scene. Despite Nekrasov's 1859 statement that Dostoevsky was "finished" and would "no longer write anything important," the author proved to the public that he was not only a master linguist but also philosopher of the type that legends are made of. The model of Existentialism, "Notes from Underground" (1864) gave birth to the "underground hero," a socially alienated character who suffers extreme miseries and yet still enjoys personal freedom and spiritual enlightenment. Emerging from the squalor, Dostoevsky's tragic heroes influenced great thinkers like Kafka and the French Existentialists. From "Crime and Punishment" (1866) to "The Brothers Karamazov" (1880), Dostoevsky continued to pursue unattractive themes with denigrated heroes at the center of it all. Dostoevsky's chronicles of ugly journeys were criticized for their "absence of healthy realism." Readers and critics alike despised the unnatural, unbelievably cruel situations in which his heroes find themselves. What Turgeniev called "psychological mole-runs" were in fact literary experiments. Dostoevsky wanted to test the limits of his characters' strength to show the ultimate victory of spirituality and individuality. If critics couldn't stomach Dostoevsky's tragic experiments, they applauded his use of dialogue. Dostoevsky's novels departed from literary norms by de-emphasizing the narrative structure and assigning responsibility to his characters' words. Through dialogue, Dosteovsky revealed everything. It is rare that a novelist has such a huge impact both technically and thematically; however, Dostoevsky managed to conquer style and substance like no other.