On Dec. 22 , 1849 , a 28 - class - old Fyodor Dostoevsky was march from a clammy St. Petersburg jailhouse into the bitter cold and placed before a firing squad . In a minute , Dostoevsky mean , he would be bushed . He had published two novels — the first a success , the next a washout — but there was so much more he wanted to say and do .
As the executioners raised their rifles , a sawhorse and cart pulled up waving a white signal flag . Czar Nicholas , a courier report , had spared Dostoevsky ’s life along with those of his fellow radical . They would or else spend the next four long time in a Siberian hard labor camp , a living snake pit alternatively of a sudden death .
Dostoevsky returned fromSiberiaa alter gentleman’s gentleman . He had occur face to face with his own mortality rate and had seen depths of cruelty that man can inflict and endure . But unlike some of his coeval , he did n’t fall back faith . In fact , his impression in God and the redemptive power of love were never stronger .
" Our image of Dostoevsky as this scowling , peaked Russian author of weighty novel mist a more nuanced picture of the real man , " state Alex Christofi , author of " Dostoevsky in Love : An sexual Life , " a literary biography of the Russian novelist .
Yes , Dostoevsky suffered from disabling epileptic seizures and struggled with a gaming dependency , but he was also a devoted family man who found the love of his life with his second married woman and close collaborator , Anna . Some of his most famous oeuvre include " The Brothers Karamazov , " " note from Underground " and " Crime and Punishment , " book that shaped existentialism and even psychology .
Let ’s get to know the literal Dostoevsky through five revealing quotation mark from his life and lit :
1. “Literature is a picture, or rather in a certain sense both a picture and a mirror.”
In 1846,Dostoevsky write to a friendexulting about the success of his very first book,“Poor Folk , " from which the above quote comes . The playscript had just been release to rave reviews and lucrative sales . " If I begin to recount all my successes for you , I would go out of paper , " he wrote .
" Overnight , he became a literary virtuoso , " says Christofi .
Dostoevsky ’s life to that level had n’t been easy . Hegrew up in Moscow , spending most of his childhood at a infirmary for the wretched where his father was a Dr. . At school , he got lost in revery and was bully by more blue classmates . Dostoevsky ’s mother die of tuberculosis when he was 15 , and his father was off two years afterwards .
orphan , Dostoevsky managed to graduate from a military honorary society and become an regular army engineer ( " not a very proficient one , " says Christofi ) , but what he really wanted to do is write like his literary paladin Nikolai Gogol . So , he wrote a manuscript of what would become " Poor Folk , " and a friend got it into the hands of a self-aggrandizing - name literary critic , Vissarion Belinsky , who thought it was a body of work of genius .
With the success of his first novel , Dostoevsky was concisely embraced by the Russian literati and drop out his engineering job with the war machine . But when his follow - up novel flounder , his new literary " acquaintance " turn on him , nose fun at his unexpended mannerisms and room of speak . Dostoevsky was always small , pale and physically weak , and his first symptoms of epilepsy appeared in his teenage years .
" Soon Dostoevsky fell into a much more dangerous , rotatory chemical group of writers who had a beauty parlour where they discussed ideas that challenge the czar , which was a vast no - no , " says Christofi . This is when Dostoevsky ’s actual trouble began .
Full quote : " lit is a ikon , or rather in a certain sense both a picture and a mirror ; it is an expression of emotion , a subtle shape of criticism , a didactic deterrent example and a written document . ““Poor Folk " ( 1846 )
2. “A murder by sentence is far more dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal.”
The above line come from " The Idiot , " a novel published decades after Dostoevsky ’s cheeseparing execution and four - year trial by ordeal in Siberia , but it reflects how his life sentence was forever impacted by his arrest and imprisonment .
Dostoevsky and his circle of dissident thinker were ratted out by an undercover officer of the tzar ’s secret police . Found shamefaced of trumped up " confederacy " charge — Czar Nicholas feared a coup like the fail 1825 Decembrist Revolt — Dostoevsky and his friends were sentenced to end by fire squad .
The last - minute reprieve was later revealed to be part of a choreographed " mock execution " intend toinflict psychological tortureon the prisoners and evoke a mislaid signified of gratitude for the " mercy " of the czar .
While we ca n’t know Dostoevsky ’s precise thoughts upon face the inflammation police squad , a character in " The Idiot " witnesses an execution by guillotine and puts himself in the position of the condemned mankind , saying , " [ T]he strongest bother may not be in the wounds but in knowing for certain that in an time of day , then in ten minutes , then in half a moment , then now , this 2nd — your soul will pilot out of your torso and you ’ll no longer be a gentleman’s gentleman . "
Dostoevsky ’s four year in a Siberian prison house were unspeakably gruesome . He was house with the most dangerous criminals , and his hands were shackled 24/7 . status in the squalid , overcrowded cell were perfectly infernal , intensify for Dostoevsky by a prohibition against book .
" He had the New Testament with him , though , " say Christofi . " And prison house was a time when Dostoevsky intend very profoundly about his own spiritualism as an Orthodox Christian . It ’s a motif that you see in the legal age of his work , post - Siberia , include his greatest novels . "
Bonus quotation : " adult male is a creature that can get wonted to anything , and I suppose that is the best definition of him . ““The House of the Dead " ( 1861 )
3. “I would sooner remain with Christ than with the truth.”
By the time Dostoevsky was release from prison in 1854 , some of the " radical " estimation that had so imperil the tsar were nowde rigueuramong young European intellectuals and writers .
" The stylish thing at the time was atheism , and new political front like socialism and utilitarianism , which rejected organized religion , " says Christofi . " Against that backdrop , Dostoevsky was quite strange in his staunch defense force of Christian faith . “In a varsity letter he compose from prison , he said that " if someone prove to me that Christ is outside the truth , " he ’d prefer to stay with Christ than with the truth .
From his lifelong contact with the poor , Dostoevsky was sympathetic to the utopian movements that target to produce a more egalitarian high society , but he feared what would happen when God was unthroned and man was elevated in his place . Keep in mind that this was a half - century before theBolshevik Revolutionand the ascent of a totalitarian communist regime that imprisoned and killed tenner of millions under Stalin .
" Dostoevsky felt very strongly that a socialism establish in godlessness would end in violence , " order Christofi . " In that , I suppose he was very prophetical . "
Bonus quote : " lf there ’s no God and no life beyond the grave , does n’t that intend that men will be allow to do whatever they want?““The Brothers Karamazov " ( 1879 )
4 . " I accept that twice two create four is an excellent thing , but if we are to give everything its due , twice two makes five is sometimes a very wizard thing , too . "
This quotation is pulled from " Notes From Underground " ( 1864 ) , Dostoevsky ’s reply to a wildly pop philosophical novel from another Russian author , Nikolai Chernyshevsky , called " What Is To Be Done ? "
Chernyshevsky is n’t a house name today , but back in the 1860s he influenced budding socialists , utilitarian and next communists with his utopian idea . harmonise to Chernyshevsky , human behavior is bound by the same rational , scientific laws as the rest period of the universe .
" If we all just pursue our rational self - interest , then the world will become a wonderful place and we can do forth with irrational concepts like God , " says Christofi . " But all of this is base on the musical theme that human existence are these clockwork creature who will only ever do the matter that is most rational . "
In Dostoevsky ’s experience , that was n’t how people worked at all . As the quote above demonstrates , sometimes we ca n’t balk saying that two and two is five , just to prove that we can .
" Sometimes people will do something obstinate , even if it ’s just to prove that they ’re complimentary , " say Christofi .
Dostoevsky himself did n’t always act as in his intellectual ego - interestingness . He was a gambler , for example . Today , we ’d say that he had a gambling habituation , but Dostoevsky only recognize that he could n’t pass up a secret plan of roulette . Whether he was loaded with John Cash or deep in debt , he gambled , and he lost far more than he won . There was nothing intellectual about such ego - destructive behavior .
The anon. principal character in " Notes from Underground " was a mess of contradiction , a " free " man who could hardly operate in society . If left to follow his " noetic self - interestingness , " the result would be chaos , not Sion . Dostoevsky continued the theme in " Crime and Punishment , " the first of his slap-up novels , in which a man ’s cruelly rational plans to murder an sure-enough woman for money go awfully incorrect .
Bonus quote : " There subsist no heavy or more painful anxiousness for a mankind who has free himself from all spiritual bias , than how he shall earliest discover a new physical object or idea to revere . ““The Brothers Karamazov " ( 1879 )
5. “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
This citation comes from Dostoevky ’s last and gravid novel " The Brothers Karamazov . " " We have this epitome of Dostoevsky as this prolific author who ’s constantly scribbling at his desk or arguing with his coeval , but he actually devote much of his life to finding a partner with whom he could set about a mob , " say Christofi .
Dostoevsky first marry a widow key out Maria in 1857 , but the two shortly bring in they were incompatible and miserable together . Maria die in 1864 , the same year that Dostoevsky lose his crony , Mikhail , and Dostoevsky found himself financially responsible for Maria ’s son and Mikhail ’s mob .
do-or-die to relieve himself of his and Mikhail ’s debts , Dostoevsky signed a declaration to deliver a short new novel in one class , but he pass 11 months working on " Crime and Punishment " instead . With only one calendar month leave alone , he sought a stenographer to take note in shorthand while he quickly dictated the novel .
The char he engage , 20 - year - oldAnna Grigoryevna Snitkina , would not only become his close literary partner in crime and business collaborator , but also the love of his liveliness . Anna and Fyodor married in 1867 and had four children , only two of whom survived to adulthood .
" Having see everything that he went through — the mock executing , the prison house in Siberia , his gambling habituation — it does feel very rewarding to see him finally encounter love , " says Christofi .
With Anna at his side ( and looking after his cash in hand ) , Dostoevsky published " The Brothers Karamazov " in 1879 . The sweeping epic was a monumental commercial-grade success .
" ' The Brothers Karamazov ' was a huge sensation at the time , " enounce Christofi . " It made him one of the most famous and revered writers in Russia . When Dostoevsky died in 1881 [ from epilepsy ] , there was a street progression of tens of thousands of people for his funeral in St. Petersburg . forward passer - by postulate if they were burying the czar . "
Bonus quote : " Beauty will save the world . ““The Idiot " ( 1869 )
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